Life Update #5 | Rant | Motivation

I’ve admittedly missed this too much. Like way too much. But as so you know from my previous posts I was in nursing school for the past few months and by far this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in relation to school. Like I desperately needed these three weeks off. Desperately.

I still have school to go to during the summer, fall and next spring will be my next semester. Just keep praying for me, will you? Like I need a lot of prayers. Just. So many prayers. You have no idea how completely done I was with this semester. Hopefully during the summer, I will be more used to nursing school and cope with it better. I have two clinical sites that I have to go to so I will be interacting with real people and have them be assigned to me as a patient. I’m interested to see how it’ll go.

While I was going to school I was working at most, two and a half days a week at different public schools as a teacher’s aide. It turns out I am really good with kids, I’ve already been offered two positions to do it full-time. I don’t know I guess I have a lot of patience with elementary school children because for the most part, they really are just beginning to grow as a person. They are just trying to do the most basic things: have food, play with friends, and learn about stuff that interests them.

An accurate description of me during the entire semester. if you know the original artist let me know so I can credit them.

Next thing I have a rant about is consumers, specifically: fast food consumers. As some of you may know, I have a short stint working at a local fast food restaurant where I was a team member. I took a lot of orders at the front, worked the drive food, and handled the fryer. I worked there for several months and I have to say this to customers: please don’t be awful. Like it is a nightmare to serve a customer who has a temper, lacks patience or sympathy for the people serving them. I’ve had to deal with customers doing the most obnoxious things from throwing a milkshake at an employee because the lid was not completely on to another customer ordering food for their family of five and leaving their half-eaten food on the tables and refusing to throw away their food or drinks or trash.

I’ve only brought this up because I went to get a large fries at McDonald’s today because gosh darn it I was craving some for a long time and I had a huge headache today and I was going to get some fries whether it was good for me or not. So I did and I proceeded to wait in line for my large fries for 30 minutes in the drive thru. A long time for fries? Yes. Does that give me the right to start cussing the employees out who have apologized profusely for the wait? Absolutely not. Just be courteous is all I’m asking. And you may never know, those employees are the ones handling your food. I’m not saying it’s right for them to do something to your food but regardless, it happens. Don’t anything that may warrant them to do something.

My "you know better" face

Finally I just need some motivation to, like I said, be “healthier”. In what regards? I guess all the aspects I discussed earlier in my previous post but my primary goal is my physical health. I have not consistently exercised in such a long time. I believe, it’s because I have not quite been able to figure out a schedule where I can fit my thirty minutes of being healthy and my “me” period where I am not working (I’m working full-time currently. Not exactly on vacation.) It’s not hard…I’ve done it before. I’m just lacking the motivation to do so.

I guess things I could do to increase my motivation is just look at other people’s achievements. Seeing what others do to achieve their goals makes me motivated to go ahead and use their strategies to do the same. Meh, I’ll figure it out soon.

Okay, that’s it. Nothing much. I’ve just missed talking to you guys.

Have a good day or evening!

Sincerely,

Jante Fazaldin

Life Update #4 | I'm Judging You | 2017 Goals

Hey!

It’s 2017 and it is a new year and it has brought me to my attention that I have not been posting on here in like a minute.

Seriously, need to do this on a more regular basis.

I guess I can do a Life Update thing and just keep you posted on certain things that are going on. It’s going to be a stream of conscious thing so I am going to do some bullet points to attempt to have it be more organized.

• December happened. Don’t really celebrate the holidays but I was off for two and a half weeks.

• I started working again! It’s not fast food this time and I actually enjoy my job. I work with the local school district and the elementary school kids are just so adorable. I tend to have more patience with the younger kids… I definitely think it’s because they are so tiny. 100% believe that is the case.

• I am going to start nursing school soon in the next couple of weeks. I’m just so happy to be back in school, I haven’t been doing any sort of formal education in over six months so I’m really glad to be back in the swing of things.

I guess what I can tell you that I’ve been up to, is that I made ONE New Year’s Resolution.

NOW, I really dislike it despise it when people say resolutions are just not worth it and full of crap. It really isn’t. Everyone should have a personal goal that they would want to achieve and the thing is, you don’t have to necessarily fulfill that goal in that same year. It can be a life goal. A ten-year goal. A five-year goal.

New Year’s resolutions are something that can have someone refocus their life goals and if it so happens to be on New Year’s Day so what? Let people live.

Anyways mine is just to be healthy: physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally; just be well-rounded. Not a hard goal to do, and something that I would aim to do. If I feel like I haven’t made it by the end of this year, there’s always next year.

Courtesy of The Huffington Post

Next thing, I have going on is this book I’m listening to called I’m Judging You by Luvvie Ajaye. I’m only an hour into the six and a half hour audiobook but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. It’s witty, funny, but gives everyone the time and place to look at themselves and see what they can do to improve on themselves as a person.

I’m Judging You is basically the perfect book to give to someone who, you know, needs a little bit of help in their lives when it comes to being a decent human being. And sometimes, that includes you. Or me. I’m guilty of being an awful person sometimes. And it’s okay.

For the most part, I think that’s about it. I want to do another Muse of the Day or make another segment of this blog, I don’t know yet. Until next time.

Sincerely,

Jante

Life Update #3 | CHON | Hair Grievances

Hey!

It’s Jante and I don’t really have anything to say other than a couple of things. I guess this can be a mini- Life Update #3?? I think so, mostly because nothing much has happened and I wanted to make this short.

| CHON |

I accidentally discovered the band while browsing YouTube and I listened to the track Book and I instantly fell in love with the sound (I played it on repeat like four times) and I never really found a band like them before. But, let’s be clear my music tastes do not vary at all. It’s actually pretty dead but I can say I've grown like the tiniest bit. A lot of the stuff that I liked 4 years ago ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT pertain to the taste that I have now. I mean my current Spotify playlists is a huge giant mess and I desperately need to delete songs on there that I do not like anymore, but given the fact that I have over 700 songs on one playlist that I’ve cumulated on there since 2011, I am going to need to dedicate a lot of time to doing so.

But according to my very quick Wikipedia search, they are an American band and the track I listened to is from their album Grow. I mean. I loved it. The track I mean. I have yet to actually listen to the album and develop my own opinion on it (I am currently listening to it and for me to truly decide on an album I need to listen to it beginning to end like 7 to 10 times). In all actuality, I discovered them like half an hour ago and I felt like impulsively writing a blog post and included them in it. Go figure.

| HAIR |

Yeah, that’s still a topic. I recently have been getting real annoyed with my hair only because it takes so much time to do upkeep on it. Like if it wanted to do a “twist/braid out" (I have my own method) it would take me 2 hours to just twist/braid my hair. And given the fact that I’m trying (yo but forreal) TRYING to be “healthier” and since that involves like running, my hair has not been lasting a long time sadly.

Which leaves wash n go’s as an answer right? Well, sure….if you didn’t wear a hijab. When I do just try to wash my hair and go, and I am in the unfortunate circumstance of needing to wear a hijab for some reason, I now have to somehow contain all of my hair to fit neatly underneath a scarf. That entails me braiding my hair into two very large cornrows and two braids near my hairline to contain my baby hairs, and by the time I take them out I am left with unevenly stretched hair all over the place. And it’s not a cute look.

So I’ve been looking to getting Marley/Havana twists installed in my hair hence, I don’t have to worry about the thing growing from my scalp for four weeks.  But that requires money and I ain’t got the bank account for that.

So we’re back to just dealing with my hair. My friend actually suggested I just twist my hair and I secure my ends with those tiny black rubber bands and I mean….that could work. So maybe I’ll be okay after all.

Alright. Yep. You really didn’t have to read this at all. I mean thanks for getting to this point. It’s cool. I didn’t really have anything pressing to say actually. But you know what it’s cool. Glad to have you here. Have a wonderful life man.

Sincerely,

Jante

America - Languages - ERGGGHH

Hey, it’s Jante and I got a topic to discuss. Languages.

We use it to communicate with each other so here is my point. Why in America is it such a normal and accepted thing for someone to know only one language?

Look I definitely understand that there are going to be incidents, backgrounds and just times where someone cannot afford to know a language either because it costs money to formally know a language, they don’t have family or friends who know another language to teach them, or it just isn’t a priority because there are more important things to worry about, such as food, water and shelter.

I am not ignorant to this and I’m pretty sure I’m leaving out other situations where learning a second language just isn’t even conceivable.

BUT when I take all of this into account it still leaves many of us (I included) who for too long of a time, were perfectly content with being monolingual. And I realize that me being comfortable with that was just stupid. Plain idiotic.

I come from a background where my mom and step-dad are bilingual, they speak both Swahili and English and my biological father being trilingual where he knows Swahili, Hindi and English. When I grew up, my parents didn’t really enforce Swahili onto me so of course, I didn’t end up speaking it when I got older and I still till this day am not fluent at it at all.

And I’m kinda sick of it.

And the thing is I feel like Americans are so easy to dismiss not learning a second language, because hey, other people should know English.

And the argument does have stuff to back it up. English is the fourth most commonly spoken language with over 510 million people speaking it.

However, the argument becomes flawed when you look at how many native speakers….it’s only 340 million people who actually spoke English as their native language…..which leaves over 100 million people to learn it as a second language.

It just bothers me so much that we have this nonchalance about it and this righteousness about ourselves as English speakers that we absolutely refuse to acknowledge the fact that it’s completely unfair to just assume other people should just learn the language. And it has gotten to the point that English is recognized as an official language by over 60 countries and even though English is not the native language that the populace speaks to begin with! Just so bothersome. So so bothersome.

But sure I understand that two of the major superpowers of the world (America and England) are English speakers and they do have a lot of say in trade and business so it is advantageous for others to learn English as a second language. But why as English speakers do we not feel like it is a necessity to learn another language??

For instance, in the US there is a huge Hispanic community, something that has definitely become more relevant since I moved to Houston. I mean Mexico is like right there. Why isn’t it required for the American public school education to teach Spanish from kindergarten to when they are a senior in high school?  

Like what cons are there to learning two languages? None. Absolutely none.

And the thing is, this can be done. Sure you would have to rework the entire school curriculum but I don’t think that it can’t be done. It’s feasible and it enlightens people and gives people a necessary and handy skill that they wouldn’t be able to get on their own.

But yeah, until that happens, I really do urge other people to LEARN A LANGUAGE. Specifically, a language that you have people who can practice with you but honestly any language that you are interested in will do. I mean, don’t be arrogant. 60 plus countries have listed English as an official language for a reason man. The least you can do is attempt to learn a language.

I understand, you may never be completely and utterly fluent. And that’s fine. What is important is the intent and the effort to do so.

So for me, I am making a pretty big goal for me to accomplish but I think I can do it, it’s gonna require a lot of practice but I’m really determined to do this.

•         At 28 years old, I will know and be able to communicate Spanish and Swahili adequately.
•          At 35 years old, I will have a basic understanding of Arabic.
• 
  

But that’s just my personal goal, and in the end, just don’t be an arrogant fool. Learn a language if you can.

And app I really suggest downloading is called Duolingo. Free language service that helps you learn a language by playing games and activities and “messaging” their robots in order to help with the conversational skills. I am learning so much from this and I urge everyone to use it. It can honestly jumpstart your second language journey.

I wish you all the best of luck and have a wonderful weekend.

Sincerely,

Jante

Thoughts

Courtesy of ReligionFacts

I WOULD JUST LIKE TO SAY. THE THINGS IN ITALICS ARE OPINIONS OR MY THOUGHTS ON THIS. ANYTHING ELSE I TRIED TO MAKE IT AS UNOPINIONATED AS POSSIBLE.

Hey, it’s me. I have stuff to say. Let’s do it.

I am going to try and not say anything on here to furthermore boost the flames and the tension that has arrived here. I’m trying, I promise.

I don’t want to bash anyone here, nor do I want to denounce everything that has happened. So let’s get this clear. Donald Trump is our president, not going to argue against it. The Electoral College is the system we use (I don’t necessarily agree with it) but nonetheless it is what we got and it chose him as our president elect for the next four years.

Okay, cool? I’m glad we got that settled.

Now, here comes the unpopular opinion or the one that is going to “rock the boat” if you will. I am a Muslim. This should be fairly obvious to everyone but if you aren’t aware well, yeah that’s me. A hijabi – at times – that lives here. Okay no one is shocked here. This hasn’t tipped anyone over into anger, I’m just stating facts here.

Next thing would be much more provocative but still it’s a fact. On December 7 2015 Donald Trump read a statement from his campaign that he wanted 
a “total and complete shutdown on Muslims” entering the United States. He then said “We have no choice. We have no choice.” Now when I hear this statement, I honestly cannot see any metaphors that he could have meant or anything of the fact. And I would like to make it very and supremely clear that I have family, specifically Muslim family members that live OUTSIDE the United States.

Does he mean to think that because there are Muslim terrorists that exist we shouldn’t have any Muslims enter the country?

Statistically speaking, there are roughly 106,000 jihadist militants that exist according to this CNN article. And according to the Pew Study, 23% of the world’s populations are Muslim, 1.6 billion people to be exact. And taking into account Trump doesn’t mind the Muslims living in the U.S. (3.3 million of them), that means he didn’t want a total of 1,596,700,000 Muslims to enter the country of the United States until representatives figured out what is wrong because .006625% of the Muslim populace are jihadi militants aka terrorists.

I’m sorry, but as a Muslim, that seems incredibly islamophobic. And as a whole islamophobia is not nearly as brought up as it should be in the media because it is and continues to be a huge problem. That’s not reassuring to me as a Muslim. But, it continues.

He continued to state that we have to look at mosques because there is “anger”.

 Alright now this one doesn’t seem to be islamophobic but disrespectful. I think that I can speak for the majority of Muslims and say that we don’t have anything to hide in our mosques. Especially in the mosques that I’ve been a part of, we are fairly open to people who are either interested in the religion, curious as to what exactly Muslims do, etc. So it’s just hurtful that people think that we could or would have something to hide in our mosques? I’m sorry, but I don’t even think Donald Trump has been to a mosque.

I promise you, our mosques are always open. I have NEVER been to a mosque where the door were locked during the daytime. There is no special phrase, password, greeting, gesture, nothing. You can just enter and pray and leave. So the rhetoric that we have to be watched NOW is painful. I spent much of my formative years in a mosque. I am currently a volunteer at a mosque and I taught Islamic studies. A mosque to me, has always been a safe place that is open for me if I ever needed it. It’s just sad to think that my safe place is considered a place to be full of “anger.”

Anyways, that occurred less than a year ago. And it was debated for a short while, maybe a month or so and it was over. And Trump made some revisions in his statement and he took a more “moderate” approach with it.

My thing is, after the election, I was hurt and upset and said that if you voted/were for Trump to unfollow me, unfriend me, and I don’t deal with you. Did I mean it? Probably not because I don’t have the ability to hold grudges and stay mad. I’m actually fairly bad at it. The thing is, regardless of everything else Trump has ever said ever, it just disturbs me that people who know Muslims are still okay with what he wanted to do. It spoke to me that “look I know that you are a Muslim, but I am still going to vote for him.” If I leave the country, and I come back like I did this summer, would I have not been allowed to come back? Is that something you would have been okay with?

To me that just seems like you didn’t care. And I felt devastated.

And yeah, I understand that the Muslim ban is more than likely not going to happen. It completely and utterly goes against the 1^st amendment and I know there is a checks and balance system in place. I am aware.

I am just disappointed that people were okay with voting for a man with this policy that completely violates the 1^st amendment and is discriminatory towards 23% of the global population.

So if I unfriend, unfollow, block, whatever it is I may have done, I promise you it was not because I was weak. No, that’s not the case at all. I am a strong person living in a country that has never respected me with a leader who seems like he doesn’t respect people like me from outside the country. Once I feel better, I will reach out. But I’m hurt. And I need time to recuperate and get on with my life.

 All in all, I hope he does an amazing job as president and I desperately hope he proves me wrong. That’s all I have to say.

Sincerely,

A sad, discouraged, yet hopeful

Jante

Life Update #2 | My Unrequited Love For Aziz Ansari | Lots of Critiquing

Hey! 



|    LIFE UPDATE    |

It's Jante obviously, but I have a new blog post up thanks to an uplifting of spirits and I am just feeling much happier now. I was really feeling quite awful for the past couple of months and I was feeling unmotivated and uninspired and basically every single un-prefix + positive attribute that you can think of. 

Well the basics of everything are:

 - I'm currently volunteering at a local mosque and I subbed for a class one day. I'm also in an Arabic class so I'm learning Arabic again and it's honestly such an interesting language. Maybe one day I can learn it as soon as I know Spanish and Swahili fluently. I want to aim for an age where I can be fluent in both languages so maybe 28? Yeah, 28 is a good age. And I don't think this is a hard task for me to fulfill, I've always been relatively good at languages and I know waaaaay too many bilingual, tri-lingual and multilingual people for me to only know English as a language.

- I also am finally getting a job...hopefully...that's still a work in progress.

- I got accepted into the nursing program and I finished all of my application procedures needed. I'm just waiting for my orientation meeting which will be in December. 

|  MY UNREQUITED LOVE FOR AZIZ ANSARI  |

This is mainly just me trying to live my fantasy that one day Aziz Ansari will somehow stumble across this blog post, read it, fall madly in love with me (in a totally platonic way cause Muslims before whatever-the-hell-he-is) and we become the best of friends. 

I just read (okay listened) to Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg narrated by him and it was just a beautiful six hours of pure joy and undiluted rapture as I listened to his nasally voice read to me his book (and also make fun of me for listening to his book). BUT IT'S OKAY cause I BOUGHT THE HARD COVER...you hear that Aziz! I BOUGHT IT SO GTFO. 

The amazing thing about this was that Aziz, managed to be quite hilarious but also provide great data, experiments and enlightening commentary in regards to social media and the pros and cons that it has on contemporary romance. In the end, I will most definitely be rereading the book again. 

|     LOTS OF CRITIQUING     |

Given the fact that I have had too much time on my hands, I have been watching way more television and films and with that I guess I kinda came across this YouTube channel called TheReelRejects and D4Darious and I guess I have just been looking at films and television shows in a different light?

I wouldn't necessarily say that I've been the most observant and greatest critic of all time but I think I have gained this ability to critically analyse and note whatever I am watching by paying more attention to how a director may set the scene, figuring out why they may shoot a scene in that way, how the set is designed and acting methodology and so on so forth. 

I have also been doing a lot of reading about the movie business and how it works and it has been really interesting. I wouldn't necessarily call this a hobby of mine nor am I interested in participating in it but rather it is something to occupy my time while I await for the next chapter of my life to pop up.

Welp, that's it and I guess I'll talk to you later. 

Sincerely,

Jante

Life Update #1 | Atlanta Review | Thank You Letter

Hey,

I have been honestly trying to make a blog post for the past few weeks I promise but I have either lost interest in the topic I wanted to discuss or lack the knowledge to do an in-depth analysis of it without leaving anything behind.

I guess I could do what I usually do in my journals and do like little bullet points to help flesh out how I’ve been doing the past couple of months. Let’s do this.

·        Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think that taking this time off from school has helped me at all. In fact, this has been an incredibly unhappy part of my life.

·        I also haven’t been working so in accordance to not going to school I’m also not working and I’m stuck at home.

·        Now with all of these three things combined, I kinda lost my feeling of self-worth which crossed into dangerous territory for me leading me to be very depressed for a period of time.

Basically, this amount of alone time for myself have not been helpful at all. I realize I like working and I like not being broke all the time.

But enough about me, I kinda want to touch a couple of things before I go.

To anyone who follows me on my other social media platform KNOWS that I love love LOVE Atlanta. I may be biased because I like Donald Glover as a person in general aka comedian, actor, rapper and now producer of my favorite fall show.

Now what I love about Atlanta is that it touches on social issues like Black-ish, HOWEVER, he lets it get weird. For instance, it touches on sensitive topics but it covers it humorously, light-heartedly and slightly off kilter which is a joy to watch.

Courtesy of FX Networks

From left to right characters Darius. (he looks really hot here I don't care...damn) Earn, and his cousin Paper Boi.

For instance in episode 5 called “Nobody Beats the Biebs”, they actually cast the character Justin Bieber as a black man which I think first off was brilliant. It made fun of Justin and continued to mock him throughout the show as a vain and arrogant adult with his shenanigans such as peeing on the wall and getting in a fight with Paper Boi. Also, the writer of this episode who is actually Donald Glover’s brother Stephen mocks the media when it comes to the nonstop coverage of this caricature who is basically the human form of an asswipe.

But they let the show get weird with other stuff such as the dialogue in between the characters, blurring the mouth of a child cussing EVEN THOUGH they have a TV-MA rating and having an entire satirical episode that portrayed itself as a talk show with its own paradoxical commercials that Donald both directed and wrote.

I would also love to give praise to Hiro Murai who directed many of the episodes here. I love how everything is directed especially this one scene where Darius and Earn go into the woods in episode 4 because everything was shot so beautifully. He also directed many of Donald aka Childish Gambino’s music videos such as “Sober”, “3005”, “Telegraph Ave”, and “Sweatpants” and the short film “Clapping For The Wrong Reasons”.

All in all, I have been unhappy for the past couple of months but I know, that Atlanta has made such a huge impact on me when I watch it, I don’t feel so unhappy anymore. Thanks, Donald.

Sincerely

Jante