NBA Lockout

The NBA (National Basketball Association) is currently in a lockout that does not seem close to an end. It has been going on for months now and the players association and the league cannot agree on a new deal. This lock out deals with the amount of money players would be able to make. Before the lockout, salaries of NBA players range from $400,000 to $20,000,000 depending on how good the player is. But even the worst players in the league make a lot of money compared to all the other jobs in the United States. And the superstars of the league, for example, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant, the make, if not, close to $20,000,000 a year which is more than enough for the rest of your life! In my opinion, athletes make way too much money and I agree that their salaries should be cut. I'm not saying that they do not deserve the money because I am one of the biggest NBA fans and I want my favorite players to succeed and have a lot of money but $20,000,000 thats just too much.
I hope that this lockout ends soon because I want to enjoy watching another season of basketball and I am looking forward to all the new players coming into the league. But in the meantime, player have been trying to come up with deals to play overseas somewhere so that they can make a little extra money since they do not get paid during the lockout. The players know that they have an obligation to their original team so once the lockout ends I know that all of them will come back to the NBA. So I agree that players going overseas to play is a good thing. It will also give them a chance to travel around the world and experience other countries. I really hope that this lockout ends and I am looking forward to the upcoming season.

Looking back

The biggest influence of my life would have to be sports and now that I am done playing competitive sports, I am starting to think about all the great times I've had. And one of my greatest memories would have to be back when I was playing for Alameda Youth Basketball in the 7th grade. I was already one of the best players in the league and a past all star, so I was capable of scoring a lot of points. Entering that game I had a really good feeling about my body and I felt like today would be a big day for me. In the beginning, I was doing everything I could to help our already talented team win yet another game and continue our undefeated season. We were all hustlers and wanted to destroy our opponents with our speed and pressure defense which drove the other teams crazy because no other teams played this type of defense. But this day was not about our team, it was about me. I was on fire, scoring every shot I put up and I was in the zone. I scored, caused turnovers, got assists and a bunch of rebounds.
I ended the game with 20 points(a career high), 10 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 forced turnovers. I was unquestionably the player of the game and I got many congratulations from teammates, their parents, coaches, friends, and family. This was an amazing day for me and probably the best basketball performance I have ever had. I will never forget that day for the rest of my life.

Second Year of Blogging

This will be my second year blogging and I am having a lot of fun doing so. I started blogging during my sophomore year which was also very fun but got hard at the end because i could not think of anything else to write about. So I basically took a year off and now I'm back into it. I wanted to continue to blog my junior year but with all the challenging classes I had along with the homework, I had no time. Blogging is very enjoyable to me because I can share my experiences and thoughts with other students my own age and it is also fun to read what other students write about because we can relate to each other more than any other adult can. My goals for this second year of blogging are, to become a more well rounded writer, and to expand my vocabulary so that I will be ready for college essays that I will be facing next year. Blogging has been very helpful to me in the past and I hope that it continues to do so now that I am doing it again.

I hope that I can continue to improve on my writing as the year goes on and I really want to become a more versatile English student. I am not very talkative so my writing will be what everyone looks at to see what I can do as an English student. And because I am also a very determined person, I want to prove everyone that I am capable of being in college. I have had a lot of doubters in the past, even I've doubted myself a couple of times, but I know I have what it takes to be successful. I've learned that I am not going to be the best at most things I do and I know that many other students are a lot better writers than I am but that's not going to stop me from trying my best and believing that one day, I can be one of the best. That drive is what will lead me to be successful in the future and will make my dreams come true.

Becoming a Senior

I am starting my senior year of high school with high hopes and goals. I am currently taking two AP classes, AP environmental science and AP calculus, and they are both very challenging in their own way. My goal this year is to earn a high enough GPA and do well enough on my Sat's to allow me to at least get into a csu college. Last year was a forgettable year because of many distractions that prevented me from trying my best at school. It was full of drama but i learned many life lessons that will help me in the future. I hope that i can really focus this year and show everyone what i am capable of doing academic wise. My senior year has started off well and i hope that i can sustain my concentration and achieve my goals. This is by far going to be my most challenging year at high school but i will have a a lot of fun during my last months and a high school student.

Being a senior feels great, especially in high school when all the underclassmen look up to you. We are role models to all the other kids who will be in our spot in a couple of years. Us Seniors can walk around school, knowing that we won't get bullied or pushed in the hallways because we are at the top of the school. For me, it is really fun to roam around the school and watching freshman, sophmores and even some juniors react when they see us walking their way. Its not that i want to bully anyone, its just that I've been in that position where you see a big senior and you want to stay as far away as possible. But now that its the other way around, why wouldn't I want to take advantage of it? Life isn't fair sometimes and this is a good way to show that. Being a Senior is the best year of anyone's high school career because we are at the top of our school.

Second Semester Final

During the second semester my writing has gotten worse. I ran out of topics to write about and was struggling to keep up with the word count. I just ran out of ideas and ended up writing about sports almost the entire semester. If you take a look at my blogs at http://jonathanmah2268.blogspot.com/ and look at the blogs I did at the beginning of the year you can tell that those blogs were more about my life and the activities I enjoy to do. Those blogs received the most comments that encouraged my writing. But as the year went on I was dealing with writers block and got sick of it. So I decided that it would make my life much easier if I just write about sports and how my favorite teams are doing. These blogs were merely facts about sports teams and I knew that this would not improve my writing at all, which was my goal from the beginning of the year. But what I did like to blog about and think has improved my writing is the literature circle letters and the book reviews on books I read during the year. I had an opportunity to tell fellow students about how I felt about a certain book and if they should decide to read it or not. This was the first time in my life when I had the opportunity to write letters to other student abut how I felt about a book and I enjoyed it very much. Even though most of the books that I read were not all that enjoyable to me, I still thought that this weekly assignment has helped me become a better writer. Writing blogs is a great idea that has helped me through many problems, most importantly writers block. This year, my blogs have been all over the place. Some were good others were not so well done but I have enjoyed this experience and I hope that I have the motivation to continue writing on my blog in the future.

My favorite blog during this year is the one that also surprised me the most when I reread it. The link to this blog is http://jonathanmah2268.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-i-got-started.html#comments. This was my third blog of the year and it is my proudest one. I finished this blog in the lab at school during your class and I treated it like any other blog. I was rushing to finish it because I was running out of time in class and I did not want to do it at home. I finally finished with a couple of minutes left and was not think about rereading it at all because I did not feel like it was my best effort since I was rushing. But when I saw that my English teacher had commented on it a week later and gave me very encouraging comments I decided to reread it and it surprised me. I did not know that I wrote such a good blog and it was probably my best one this entire year. I had no idea that I could write this well and was very surprised when my teacher compared it to a college entry essay. This blog was probably the most thought out blog of the year. I wanted to share with everyone why I started to play sports and how it has become a huge part of my life. I started off this blog saying "Sports have influenced my life in a huge way. It has given me confidence, determination, focus, and attentiveness. The traits that will lead me to success." This was pretty much the reason why I started to play sports. I was a very shy and independent as a child and I wanted to get out of that habit. So I played sports to boost my confidence up so I could be able to meet new people and determination, focus, and attentiveness were just a plus to the confidence I received. In the second paragraph of my blog, I wrote a story about how I got started in playing basketball. I explained how my parents forced me to play basketball and what they did to help me get better. At the end I wrote a paragraph about the purpose of why I decided to write about this topic. In the conclusion I emphasized on taking risks and how it may help you but will never cause and damage. Taking a risk can decide whether or not you will become rich or poor and happy or sad. I am very proud of this blog and I had a fun time reading it over and over. "How I Got Started" is my favorite blog of the year.

Having a blog has been great. It has helped me become a better writer, getting me through writers block, and given me a opportunity to share my life story's with others. My blog has not changed the way I write all that much except for helping me stop repetitive sentences. I still use the same style since I was in middle school which is the normal style of writing an introduction on my topic, a story about the topic, and a conclusion. Blogs have made me think about my life as a child and why I am the man I am today. It has given me great memories about my childhood and my past experiences that were both good and bad. I am going to try to continue on improving my writing by blogging in the future but I know that it will be a huge challenge for me next year with everything I have to deal with. I probably won't write blogs next year because I will be so busy with the Sat's, sports, and school but I will try to remember writing in the years to come. If i do continue to write, my goals are to improve my writing fluency, getting out of writers block, and being able to write long stories without getting writers block. My blogs have made writing for me a lot more enjoyable because it makes me think back and reminisce on the past and all the great times I had when I did not have to worry about so much things. This has been basically a school thing for me but I will try to make this a non school related activity in the future. I might even make this a hobby of mine if I want to continue to write. This year has been amazing for me and I loved writing blogs every week. I hope that I can remember to write on my blog in the future so i can have fun and improve my writing. Blogs have been extremely helpful to my writing.

I did numbers 1, 2, and 8.

A Clockwork Orange

The novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthoney Burgess is about a young teen boy, Alex and his droogs, Dim, Pete, and Georgie who run around in London causing trouble. they have been into a lot of trouble over the years but that doesn't stop them. When the foursome isn't taking drug-laced milk in the Korova Milkbar and speaking in their slang, they are robbing, beating, and raping London citizens. On a particular night, they beat up an old man with science books and a homeless man, they also get into a fight with a rival gang led by Billyboy, and steal a car and take it for a joyride to the country. Alex lives in a life full of crime and he is caught up in all of it. I feel very sorry for him and his friends because they have to deal with messing up thier lives because of where they are from.

The author also uses a unique slang that he created just for this book. he uses words like droog instead of friends and other words as well. He said "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence." The author uses the woed droog to describe Alex's friends. But his droogs don't have his back forever they actually tried to kill him for “their horrible selfish and boastful politics". This was a very interesting part for me because it was cool to see his best friends turn on him. That was very selfish of his friends and I felt very bad about what Alex had to deal with. There is also very violent thinking in parts of this book as well. For example, alex says " My endeavour shall be, in such future as stretches out its snowy and lilywhite arms to me before the nozh overtakes or the blood spatters its final chorus in twisted metal and smashed glass on the highroad,to not get loveted again. Which is fair speeching". You can see that when Alex talks about violence he has a very delightful and aesthetic tone to his voice. It is kind of weird how he would talk about violence in such a happy tone. Its like he is happy to kill someone eventhough he know its wrong. If that is true, that is very scary. Who would want to kill someone on purpose, its just wrong.

I also like how Alex is a very tough kid that never gives up. Near the end of the book, Alex falls from the building but doesn’t kill himself. All he got was a break his back, wrists, and feet, among other body parts, before passing out a crumpled mess in the street. I like how he is so strong and a real man. He has grown up a lot over the course of the book and I like how he has improved as a person. I also like how this book isn't a type of book that has a confussed kid that is surrounded by drugs and violence but as the book goes along he learns to become a better person. I can see a little improvement but it is not too big and I really like that. In the first book I read it was exactlly like this book except that the teenage boy learned to become a better person at the end. I am really tierd of those types of books and it is refreshing to finally have a cool book that is about a troubled teenage boy and his gang. I also give props to the author for amking up his own language for this book. It must have been really hard to come up with words that sound like real words but aren't really. Droogs is a really good word that can make someone think that it is real. I thought it was until my partner told me that this book is full of fake words taht the author made up. It was really hard for me to understand at first but as I read the sentence over many times and many times deeper in the book I finally got a good understanding of what they meant.

This was a really good book from start to finsih that I had a really fun time reading. I liked many parts in this book that included a lot of violence and action because it keeps me focused. In the last book I read, I had a really hard time getting focused because it was so boring to me. This is the type of book that I really enjoy reading. I love the whole storyline as well. I like how Alex has a gang at the beginning and they fight other gangs but later his droogs turn on him and try to kill him. Stuff like that keep me wanting to read more because I want to know what will happen next. I also like how this book is based on a young kid who is surrounded by wiolence and drugs, which is why he is what he is. he fell into pure pressure and could not handle himself. Alex just wanted to fit in and it turned on him. what seemed like a crazy fun life quickly turned bad when he started to get in trouble with the cops. Alex life was a really bad one and I felt very sorry for what he had to go through. I know that this is just a book and is not real but this has a lot of parts that relate to real world stuff. I am pretty sure that there are a lot of kids out there who are caught up in the life of drugs and violence and don't know how to escape. I fell very bad for those kids because they are just wasting their life. This was one of the best books that I have ever read in my life and I am glad that I finally chose a book that fit my expectations.

Basketball trouble

Dwyane Wade testified for the first time Friday at the trial where two ex-partners are suing him for $25 million in a failed restaurant deal, primarily explaining his relationship with best friend Marcus Andrews, who helped broker the ultimately flawed arrangement.The Miami Heat star was called as the case's third witness. He spent about an hour on the stand before court broke for the weekend and will be called back Monday morning for further questioning by plaintiff's attorney Richard Bales.The bulk of the questions to Wade involved how his agent, Chicago-based Henry Thomas, had negotiated several successful deals for him both on and off the court, including sponsorships with T-Mobile, Converse, Lincoln, Gatorade, Topps and others. But in the restaurant deal, Wade relied on Andrews to help him make certain decisions, instead of having Thomas exclusively handle the deal.The lawsuit involves the defunct plan over what was to be a chain of D. Wade's Place sports-themed restaurants. Plaintiffs Mark Rodberg and Lauren Hollander claim Wade breached a contract by demanding higher compensation than first agreed to and then abandoning the deal in 2008.
Wade says he's entitled to damages because Rodberg and Hollander used his likeness in ways he did not approve.Wade and Andrews have been close since they were growing up as neighbors together in Chicago.The restaurant deal was first mentioned to Andrews by Richard von Houtman another ex-business associate of Wade. The NBA guard has accused von Houtman of defaming him in e-mails to Heat president Pat Riley, and von Houtman has filed a countersuit to that.Wade acknowledged he was intrigued by the original notion of a restaurant but needed to learn much more before committing."I'm sure I told Mr. Andrews I needed more information," Wade said. "The biggest thing that I probably expressed to Mr. Andrews was to go back and get more information on what with these restaurants they wanted do to, what are they, what, where, how and all that. I needed more information than someone wanted me to do a restaurant."In time, Wade collected that information, and the sides went ahead with the venture, which unraveled quickly.The suit was filed in December 2008, alleging Wade Global Enterprises made "unjustifiable and unreasonable" demands such as a 30 percent ownership stake in the restaurant enterprise. The original deal called for Wade to receive a 10 percent stake, plus a guaranteed $1 million over the first five years of the arrangement, and Andrews a 2 percent share. I honestly think that the authorities made a huge deal out of nothing. What Wade did was not even that bad and could have been resolved at the spot without including the cops. I feel very bad for Wade not only because he might need to give up a ton of money but because his basketball reputation and the kids that look up to him will be ruined. This is a very bad situation for Wade and I hope that he gets out of it without any harm to his career because he is a great athlete and needs to concentrate on basketball.