Final Project: Farm Market

           If you ask me to buy ingredients for a specific meal I will head to the Gristedes super market across the street but instead I was asked to go to a specific market which I'v never heard of, called the farmers market. The farmers market gives the opportunity to small family farms to promote there farms and to directly sell fresh products to consumers. The farmers market is much more than just a stand with fresh products but more of a cultural event. Many people attend these special daily events to get the best nutrition possible. Every product is naturally grown and even some given to you still with roots, such products like cilantro, tomatoes, broccoli and many fruits are sold along with eggs, milk and bread. My visit to the farmers market was a great first experience I attended with my girlfriend, Sherlyn Olivo. It was her first time visiting as well and she was also very impressed with how big of an event it is an the amount of attendees it attracts. At first I didn't know what meal to make because I have never really cooked a full meal other then breakfast or some rice so I had to find a way to bring all the products together and make a simple yet healthy meal. I walked my way up from 14th st. and broadway towards 17th st. I got to see many different farmer stands selling flowers, fishes, bread, vegetables, fruits dairy products even hunny. My girlfriend helped me think of the idea in making a vegetable omelet since all the ingredients were being sold in the farmers market. I worked my way down the stands picking up cilantro from one stand then tomatoes a bit further down along with onions and then went down towards the egg section. I notice many of these products cost a bit more then it will regularly cost at a supermarket and I believe its because of the fresh products we are obtaining also it takes quite some time and labor to get the products from the farms into the city. But i believe it was all worth every penny, you can smell how fresh these vegetables smelled. I noticed an abundance amount of slim people attended the market making it quite obvious that they eat extremely healthy and keep a good physique. I finished my shopping by spending about $25 and headed home to make my meal. I chopped my tomatoes, onions, and cilantro with the help of my girlfriend and then poured into a bowl with the organic eggs and cooked it on a pan. I wasn't able to eat it because I had just finished eating a meal so instead left it for my mom to eat on the next morning. Her opinion was that the omelet came out delicious and believes it was because of the fresh vegetables in it.

Blog Entry 13: Midterm

      Right or wrong. Is usually the task billions of people debate on, on a daily basis. Whether it's take public transportation to work or drive or maybe buy one brand of yogurt and not the other, or it can even be more sever situations such as "do I get married?" One thing is for sure and that is that many of the decisions we take on a daily basis can affect us in many ways, now and sometime during the long run. In the case of Neo in the 1999 blockbuster hit "The Matrix" he was given a simple choice but one that will change everything he has known about life in general. It was either to take the blue pill and stay in his current existence or the red pill, to find out the "true" answers he desperately desires to know. Personally I am opposed to Neo's decision in taking the red pill and would have instead taken the blue pill for various reasons. One thing i will never do is trust a stranger into giving me a completely unknown pill. And if taking the red pill is going to change my life completely then I am against that too no to mention leaving family and loved ones behind.

      In "The Matrix" Neo is approached by a computer hacker by the name of Morpheus who informs Neo that he knows the answer to which he has been on the search for which is "what is the matrix?" He then proposes to Neo to take the red pill to learn to entire truth or the blue pill and stay living as is. Trusting Morpheus as Neo did would have been a big no to me. How would I know if this guy is trying to kill me, hurt me, or drug me up with this red pill. If anything Morpheus could be lying to me and the pill would drive me to insanity. It's just not moral for someone to randomly consume objects that are unkown to them. Mother always said "don't drink from a cup which is not yours" because you never known and its not worth taking the risk.

      I believe Neo took the biggest risk ever in taking the red pill and accepting to change his life forever. Not many people are good at making life changing decisions with the ease that Neo did it in. I am one to not be able to accept a life changing decision like this one. Unlike Neo I am very satisfied with the way my life is going whether it is a lie or not i am very happy. I have a job, going to school part time, have a loving girlfriend along with family and friends who care about me. These are important factors to be satisfied in life with and that is something Neo doesn't possess. Maybe if he did he would highly reconsider making a drastic decision like the one he took.

      Eventually it all comes down to the way you see your life and how you value your existence. Many would take the red pill for the adventure as a classmate of mine Gabe said but I believe in the long run of taking this red pill it would come down to haunt you.

Blog Entry 9: Telecommute Report-Out

It was my first experience ever having a class online with all my peers on at the same time. I feel this is a great way to start having classes with technology advancing on a daily basis we all need to learn to commute online and learn more from each others responses. I really learned a lot from other students responses on how we all relate on many same ideas but also have different standings on certain discussions. What helped me in this telecommute is that i knew that I had a very well understanding of the movie and i wasn't alone in my ideas. I believe the only problem is the pace in which others response and how both classes aren't having the discussion together but its understandable since both classes have different schedules.

Blog Entry 8: The Truman Show

            We are easy to criticize the world we live in and the way society runs on a daily basis. Many say its a cruel world and how they would change it in a quick second if they could, but would you really want to make everything around you perfect ? Christof was able to make this possible for Truman Burbank in the 1998 drama-comedy film "The Truman Show." This film showed the idea of a producer and creator Mr. Christof adopting an unborn but unwanted child by the name of Truman. He then sets up the perfect town of Seahaven which is a dome under where everyone is an actor to live around Truman. He's is set to live the most perfect life and be broad casted on a 24/7 schedule with thousands of tiny cameras scattered around the town capturing his every move. Now many may think this is the most convenient and great way to live with little worries and perfect standard of living everywhere you go. But I for one don't believe this is fair and it's cruel to have someone living that way and not knowing what the real world is. I would prefer living in the real world in which I live in today because even though there is a lot of evil and problems to deal with it's still our home and wouldn't want to live a lie.
           Truman lived the most perfect life under Christof's dome with most concepts going his way having a home and a wife, a great job. But he also had many issues that kept him in Seahaven in the first place such as the death of his "father" and with making flights and travel an impossible mission for him. Truman was living in an unbarred cell where we was the entertainment for the audience he wasn't given the liberty to do anything he wished to do starting from he was a little boy and it's very upsetting to know people will sacrifice another humans life for entertainment and money. I believe Christof also had a message towards Truman and the audience by showing how good of a world it can be if we all lived by the rules and didn't corrupt society. Its an exceptional message but delivered in the wrong way by sacrificing Truman in the middle of all of it.

Blog Entry 19: Watching and Responding To The Story of Stuff

          The United States have one of the highest consumer percentages in the world. Resources are obviously needed to produce products for the high demanding consumers in this country and with most of the resources gone, we go on ahead and start consuming third world countries natural resources. A very big issue has arised because of this and its mostly due to the greediness of the large business corporations. With supplying themselves from third world countries these establishments know they have to pay little, close to nothing for the resources they would be consuming and not only that but they wouldn't have to deal with the damage left behind after whats needed is taken. Many suffer but the only beneficiaries are the large corps and the consumer who buys without fully knowing the process it takes to buy there "needs"

Blog Entry 16: Let Them Eat Fat

          On a daily basis I come out of work and think to myself if there would be time to eat a full healthy meal at home or if maybe I would need to stop by somehwere quick to get a bite. Now I've noticed I don't work in the "richest" neighborhood and also that there are an abundance amount of schools around. With that being said I estimate at about a 10 block radius there are about five fast food restaurants on a single avenue. Fast food restaurants have been known to target poor income tax communities opposed to the higher income communities. Now why is it structured that way? It's pretty simple, it is highly believed that because the hard working low income tax workers need a bite they can feel perfectly pleased with a five dollar meal at Wendys. This is very tragic towards the lower class citizens because of the amount of calories that are consumed in every bite.

             In the super speed society that we live in today, most people seek the faster, cheaper way to go. And what better use of this saying then with the food we consume. But fast-food food chains thought to themselves that they need something new to catch the eye of the consumer and for the last 20 years they started on a theory of "super sizing". Super size meals have grown extremely popular for the average low class citizen. For a mere seventy-nine cents they can go from a regular size meal to jumbo size. You might think well that's great I just doubled my meal for less than a dollar how much better can it get? But what some don't realize is that they are also going to be doubling the amount of calories being consumed. I've caught myself plenty of times falling for the "super sizing" theory, but then felt guilty after I saw how many more calories I have taken in instead of going for the normal meal. So this causes a great deal of concern because our poor inner-city folk are getting bigger and bigger each day that passes by which can lead to many health issues.

So ask yourself next time what is the difference in calories that I will be taking in between choosing a jumbo meal or a regular one? Well recent studies have show. That the average calorie consumption at a fast food restaurant is around 680 calories. Compare that to 1340 calories in a jumbo meal. This brings many concerns to nutritionists who see that we are also living in a day in which physical activities are at a all time low. So Instead of going the easy unhealthy way use those five dollars to buy some pasta and Ravi sauce. I believe it fills you up a bit more than a jumbo meal at Mcdonalds plus leftovers.

Blog Entry 15: Responding to the Meatrix

             The human race wouldn't be able to survive without it. One of the many things we all have in common is the consumption of food. Different foods from vegetables, fruits, meats and dairy poducts. Most of these selections are produced and or grown in enourmous farms where the animals are raised and the plants are grown. We might sometimes believe the milk, eggs, pork or steak are healthy for us but what we don't know is the truth behind how these products are really "assembled" behind closed doors. Big farm corporations have damaged the true meaning of agriculture and have (in some way) fed us all pieces of there garbage. I believe its a great harm to the community in having the big corporations taking over the agriculture industry. There have been numerous cases in where many people have been extremely ill because of how foods were processed. Not to mention how these industries have slowly taken over and destroyed small family farms who do process food the healthy way.

              The way that "big time" farming corporations work is with the theory that the more they produce at faster speeds the faster they can get it to consumers and the more money they make. To do this corporations have ways to speed up the process which is not always the "safest" way to proceed. Speeding up processes include antibiotics and artificial hormones to boost the rate in which the animals can produce goods. Because of this humans blindly start taking in the goods they purchased at the super market and end up sick. The most common of sicknesses are food poisoning which can easily have you end up in a hospital bed. I'v had a couple of friends end up in the hospital from bad food poisoning just from drinking a cold glass of milk without being lactose intolerant.