Blog Entry 17

The food unit has been reflected more or less in the stories "The allegory of the Cave", “Truman Show", The Matrix, “Red pill or blue pill”. Writing constantly responses and essays that were based on those stories and movies, I learned a lot of things that are going to be useful in my life. That we are always given choices in our life, and it’s up to us how we want to make our life, to go the right path or the wrong one, to look forward for a brighter future and opportunities or stay in the same place.  For example the food, which is an important factor in our life, can be healthy and harmful at the same time. We are the ones who have to decide what it is better for our families and us. Either we don’t care about our health and purchase all the products from supermarkets where most of the food has additives, or we choose to live a healthy life and protect our families by buying organic products that are sold in store like “Farmers Market”.


 From the series “The Meatrix” I got to read more about the issues of the food that nowadays is highly processed and contains numerous food additives, plus I learned about the animal welfare and the antibiotics that are making the animals grow faster. It is very sad about what’s happening in the world. It seems to me like the more technology is getting into our lives, the less quality we are giving to ourselves.

I believe that after so much practice, like commenting on Dr.X’s students blog entries plus the CAT practice that we have done in class, I feel more confident about writing the CAT at this moment. But, I feel that I still have to work on developing more my ideas and make them clear for the reader. Maybe by giving more examples from my personal experience that would be related to the topic. Therefore I still hope to do well on the cat and get a good grade.

Entry Blog 16

In America there’s a big company called The Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A) that controls the quality, the freshness and the safeness of the food from all over America. There job is to make sure that all the food companies are respecting the rules, and are offering to their costumers a fresh and a not expired product. The F.D.A. has agents whose mission is to check all the food that is being imported in our country and as well before is exported to our country.  Although this may be true, but thinking realistically this is not enough to protect a nation, as well as some restaurants and food companies from not consuming or serving the none fresh food. In that case, only a few of the companies remain to serve food that is safe to have it.

Those days store owners or restaurant owners are too concern about their business to do well, then about their customers. The only think that some of them want is to make money, and don’t care about anything else. Only a few of the owners are really thinking about the safety of the food that they are going to sell.  Most of the times, we can find fresh food in those supermarket, restaurants and small stores that are in business for a long time, and they are well known in the neighborhood.

I had a terrible experience with one of my favorite restaurants. I used to enjoy going to “La Favela” because I loved their food, plus I had a good friend who worked there, but one day all desire of going their finished. Whenever I was going to “La Favela I was always having their special of the day, so once I went for 3 days in raw and in those days they had the same special. All that was because they didn’t sell much of it before, so they kept putting it on special. That made me wonder how that could happen, and when I asked my friend she said that their business was not going well anymore so they had to sell the same food for a few days in raw.  I felt unsafe with their food, because I didn’t know how fresh it was and it will be so then I stopped going there.

If people really want to have a good quality food they should go to an expensive restaurant, or as I have mentioned earlier, to a well known restaurant in the neighborhood. That will give them a good service, a nice environment and serve them a safe food.

The restaurant I work at is located in Upper East Side, and is in business for twenty years. It is well known for the best quality of its deserts, panini’s and food in general. The Upper East Side residents are always safe about the freshness, and the tourists plus the new costumers always tend to come back again. The specials of the day are actually changing every day, the products are always fresh and high quality. The only problem is that it’s expensive and not a lot of people can afford going there.

Summing up, I think we should always ask ourselves, what kind of produces we are consuming, are they healthy enough for our families and where we are buying them?. In that case, we will be more aware about the supermarkets where we are usually buying food, and our favorite restaurants . That way we will live a healthy life and have a strong immune system.

Blog Entry 15

“The Meatrix” represents some short video series about the reality of the animals industry, the living and rising of the animals and the afterward effects towards the population. That movie has been made after the original movie “The Matrix”, where the nation lives in a blind world where everything seems perfect but fake at the same time. We are still living in a Matrix, because people consume too much of the food that looks good and tasty, but they have no idea where it comes from. In other words is it really healthy, as the way it looks or is it dangerous and they might poison themselves and their family? Nowadays most of the food is not as tasteful and healthy as it looks. People should stop buying that kind of food because it has additives, on the contrary they should shop in stores where they know that most of it is healthy and homemade. That would be stores like food co-wops or farmers market.

In those days, in big cities like New York the population goes food shopping in big stores, because it’s fast, convenient, the food looks always fresh and good, we can get anything desirable, at anytime and we have those type of stores located in all five boroughs. That would be the big supermarkets like Key Food, Trade Fair and etc... Most of us go shopping there, and then wonder themselves, how they got to become obese, gain weight or weaken their immune system. It is very simple, because the food is unhealthy and anything we consume from there it harms us.

The costumers have no idea how the food is being processed, and then delivered to us. It all comes from factory farms. Those animals are not allowed to go outside and graze on open land. They live in a small place as close as possible to each other. That’s why they get diseases’ that are treated with low doses of antibiotics.  Also for productivity they are given hormones.

In contrary when buying food from Farmers Market, we can taste a much bigger difference than the one in Key Food, because there we can find delicious home-style foods, farm fresh products and we can be assured that all animals are raised humanely or "the old-fashioned way."  They are raised with no antibiotics or growth hormones.

In conclusion, the nation should wake up and realize with what kind of food they are feeding themselves and their family. It would be better if we would be able to spend more money on food, but get a better quality of food, an “organic” one. Shopping in stores like Farmers Market would stop the continue problem of obesity.

Blog Entry 14

The makers of The Meatrix used The Matrix as the basis because of the similarities between them. The animals that live in those farms represent us, the nation, who seems to be living in a perfect world. When from the other side it’s all a lie, because poor animals don’t know of a better living. I think day by day their living condition get worse because, people want to make more money out of them and at the same time not to spend too much on raising them.  So that can affect their food, the place where they live, and from here the quality of the food becomes unhealthy for the nation. As the animals are locked in the Meatrix , the same humans are locked in the Matrix as well.

Blog Entry 13

The movie “Matrix” is about a virtual world where humans are grown in pods and are connected by cybernetic implants to an artificial reality called the Matrix. Neo is chosen to be part of the Matrix, because he is different from others. He was offered by one of the Matrix members, named Morpheus, to choose between two pills, the red or the blue one. The red pill represented the truth or how far down the rabbit hole goes and the blue pill meant no change, to stay in his current existence. Neo decided to go with the truth, with the red pill. From there he is taught to become one of them, “a superhuman”. At the end Neo becomes a hero. By trusting himself and his ability’s he save’s Morpheus and the world.  If I had to choose between the red and the blue pill, I would have chosen the red pill. Because I would like to know the truth and what is really happening around us, who is surrounding us, then living in a lie and not be aware of what’s going on in the world.

Apparently if Neo hadn’t chosen the red pill  he would have never found the reality about himself and about the real world. It is very important for us to know the truth because, this way we will be more careful about our surroundings and we won’t have a wrong believe about something.

For example, I have my family far away from me, and once something terrible happened there, my grandfather passed away. My parent’s haven’t told me that bad news for a long time and when they finally spoke to me, I was very upset about the news and very disappointed with them .Whenever I asked my parents about my grandfather, they would always lie telling me he was around. I would rather prefer knowing the truth, then being deceived all the time

Another reason why I agree with Neo’s choice is, because everyone at some point is tempted to go out there and visit a different world. Seeing a world full of technology and super power it might answer a lot of questions that most of us have, especially after reading so many science fiction books and fiction movies. 

 In conclusion, the “Matrix” movie opened our eyes to many things that we wouldn’t think about before. It made us realize that we are always offered choices in life, now it depends on us how much we want to know the truth and move on, or stay in the same position and ignore the reality.

Blog Entry 12

Looking back at what I have done since the beginning of the semester, I can positively say that I got better in writing and organizing an essay.

 I remember before I used to always struggle with this problem and make mistakes whenever I was supposed to write an essay, because I didn’t understand how a correct essay should be written. Now, with the teacher’s help, plus the new system to me typing almost everything on the computer, I learned how to write it in a correct format.

In this class I got to learn how to listen and understand better the point in a movie, and not only in a movie but when reading an important passage in a newspaper or a book.

For example we saw a very interesting and old movie with Jim Carrie called “The Truman show”. Based on that movie we responded to a significant topic using the correct structure. And then followed another movie “The Matrix” witch I had watched years ago but never understood the real point of it.  Reading my classmates comments on the movie, I learned new things about the movie also how to respond and write correctly upon it.

 In conclusion,I think that if I will be writing more and more essay's and at the same time follow the structure, I will be able to write great essay's by the end of this class. Practicing will be the key to success.

Blog Entry 11

The passage "The Dangers of Reality TV" written by Timothy Sexton is about the reality television effects on the teenagers.Timothy states that some of the issues that TV sends out are " the importance of competition, the value of image over ability ".

One of the most important factor in reality television is the fact that the better looking one and not the smarter one will win the game in almost all the cases. With the reality TV, education becomes of lesser value because there's no need of knowledge to make money on those TV shows. Most of the maker's of reality TV is the reflection of the society nowadays, but in fact this is not true because just those in power think so.

 In this passage Timothy Sexton states Reality TV presents danger and bad influence for young fans. And that only the attractive and with no education people get the highest scores on a game or are actually the winners. When the smarter but not so good looking go back home with empty pockets.

 I do agree with Sexton because I know that there are smart people with a degree and a good job that are going out there on a stage just for fun.

 The filling of getting on the stage and being watched by million of people it is not that easy, you actually have to be strong to face that and smart enough to speak wisely while being filmed, because sometimes there are shows that are transmitted direct on the television.

 It is not trrue that only beautiful people get on the show, because it is not hard to hae a make up done by a proffesional and the person becomes a beauty right away.