Inspiration Blog

 

One Land. One Flag. Just Freedom.

Inspiration #3

            Another person that inspires me is a well-known male in some of Philadelphia named Harry Leong. Harry Leong is the center director at the church and after-school program that I tutor at, but Harry isn’t just a center director. Harry doesn’t seem busy all the time, but if you didn’t know Harry is always working at home, work, and even just on the streets. Harry works for the church a lot, but what inspires me the most is that he is in charge of one of Philadelphia’s Chinese Basketball teams. There is a team around the areas of Chinatown here in Philadelphia that harry is the supervisor/director/coach of and they are called the Philadelphia Suns. It is a basketball team for all different ages and genders such as the young suns ranging from 7-14 years old, Risings suns that are no older than 18 and is attending high school, The lady suns from 13 years old and up, Men suns team A & B, and even Senior Suns ranging from old to older.

Even though Harry only coaches the young suns he still takes care of all the financial problems that these teams cost by having some of his players participate in the Chinese Lion Dance. The Chinese lion dance is a tradition where they perform in lion heads made by different materials to use while they shake it in different ways performing some of their own routines. The Chinese lion dance is also traditionally performed at some Chinese grand openings at a restaurant, weddings, events such as Phillies game, Asian inheritance month, and especially Chinese New Year. The Chinese lion dance is one of Chinese traditions that what the Chinese

believes to give good luck and also scare away the bad spirits and start of new cleansed life once again. Harry organizes a lot of community events such as a Chinatown cleanup not because he lives in Chinatown, but just to keep any community clean and safe. Some other community attractions that he holds is an after-school program and also a summer camp called PUMP. Some of these attractions are available for kids because Harry is very good with kids. Before he became the center director of the Chinese Christian Church & Center he was a teacher at Mc Call elementary. Harry was basically in the Philadelphia community forever.

            For the most part Harry Leong is gradually becoming more renown every day because of the work he does for us.  You might not know him now but eventually after you read this and is very curious to learn a little bit more about this man it is possible you can search up Harry Leong on Google. That’s how popular harry is. He is like the Yao Ming of China, but instead in Chinatown.

2. Select a quote form pp. 170, Do you agree or disagree with it?

The quote I am using is from Lucy Flucker Knox that said, “I hope you do not consider yourself as commander-in-chief of your own house, but be convinced, that there is such a thing as equal command.” From that quote of Lucy Flucker Knox I agree what he stated is an honest and true statement. The reason why I agree to this statement is because I think it means if you do something that against me I have the right to do it right back. For example, if you were to kick me out of your house one day and you decide to come to my house, I have the same authority to kick you out. Another example I believe that explains this quote is if a community group is trying to all agree on something and there is one person leading the whole discussion other people will have the right to disagree instead of following what the leader does. I think the overall meaning to this quote is saying that everyone has equal right no matter what you say and also it has a little piece of freedom of speech.

3. Select the Right from the Bill of Rights (first 10 Amendments on pp 199-200) that you think is most important. Explain why you think so.

             I believe out of the first ten amendments the most important one and reasonable one is the first amendment. The first amendment written was “The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the Freedom of speech, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.”  I believe the most important part of this amendment is that they prohibit making of any law respecting an establishment of a law. I believe this is the most important part of the amendment because if one of the most important people had the authority to control mostly anything believes in a certain religion and says that all other people that don’t believe in the same religion as me shall die. That’s just cruelty towards other peoples religion. Another important peace to this amendment is what I believe to be is the rights of freedom of speech. If people didn’t have the right to say whatever they can and if they didn’t have the rights to do that some of the things we have today might not exist. For a big example if Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t say what he thought of segregation then all races could still possible be still separated. Even though he spoke what he wanted to and possibly died from it, he has done good in our world.

Inspiration Blog #2

            Another person that is a real inspiration to me is a male that went to the same church as me and pushed me to work harder in basketball while staying close to my studies. No matter how many shots I have taken, no matter how many shots I missed, and no matter what I did wrong he would always stay positive and guide me through my mistakes. This person’s name is Daniel Lui and if I needed a person to guide me through my troubles in life it will probably be him. Dan introduced me to the older folks that were always some people that inspired to become a better person. Before meeting all these people I wasn’t the best person that you could meet because I would always cause trouble to get people mad and sometimes just to look cool. Just the way Dan lives his life motivates me because it expresses the way he was raised and how he was as a child. I believe he told me once where he was just like me as a child where he was sort of the bad boy gave me a tendency to change the way I live my life too since he can do it. All the advice that he gives me about basketball just makes me improve because we play alike in many ways, but as a more experienced person he is obviously better. He keeps telling me “Man Jackie, you are definitely better than me when I was 16.” That motivated me to get better so I can above exceed him before I get to his age. Maybe he’ll just keep telling me the same thing, but instead of 16 maybe he’ll say like 21 or 24.

Even though Dan wasn’t thinking about pursuing the basketball dream like Jeremy Lin he is still one of my closest referrals that I can get inspiration from. I can most definitely consider Dan as an older brother I never had. As Christian brothers we have the bond that cannot ever be broken. Thanks Dan. 

Inspiration Blog #1

         The biggest inspiration in my life is a 22 year old Asian-American male that attended Harvard University in Cambridge, MA named Jeremy Lin. His parents were pretty strict at the time when he was younger because you know Asian Parents. They always want you to go to the best schools and become successful so when you get older and will be making thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars you can do whatever you want. After always hearing that lecture from his parents he always wanted to play basketball on the sides of his parents note. Didn’t have to be professionally, but more like as a hobby or something that he can enjoy doing on his free time instead of just studying and working all the time, but if he were given the chance to go professional he would. As he got to know the sport more he started to play and practice hard whenever he had the time in 6-8th grade. He played for his middle school where he just had fun and had the passion to keep playing and getting better. His team made it to the championships when he was in 8th grade and even though they lost, his coach told his that he led the team to the championships. As he graduated his coach told him that he can be the leader of a team and to push until you succeed. Jeremy didn't know what that really meant so he just took those words to the high school he wanted to attend.

The first year in high school he saw a post on a bulletin board saying that there is Junior Varsity and Varsity try outs for the school basketball team. Jeremy couldn't decide which one he should try out so he decided to go to the coach of both teams and ask for some of his advice. Going to the coach he asked him "which team should I try out for?" the coach said "you're a little skinny, but I advise you to try out for the varsity. Let me tell you boy, varsity practice is a little bit more advanced then JV practice, but if you don't make the varsity and I see that you have the power to play I'll put you on the JV squad." So Jeremy tried out and the coach was impressed of what Jeremy could do, but as Jeremy practiced other students started stating some racist slurs such as "china man can't ball and go back to china". As a Christian Asian-American that didn't want to start any trouble the only thing he could do was ignore everything that was happening. Once the school evidenced him playing the sport and seeing that he was better than they imagined they couldn't do anything, but to cheer him on instead of trying to put him down. From his first year on to his fourth year he played and worked hard in basketball while studying his books. His senior year he averaged 21.6 points per game and he also won the division championships for his school. For four years straight he's been passing through racist remarks about him playing basketball, but instead of just quitting, he ignored all of it and it brought him to where he is now.

What I was shocked about in his life was that if he didn't pursue his dream into playing basketball for the NBA he was going to become a Christian Pastor. In 2011 comparing a Christian pastor to a NBA player is almost a million steps away. Most people think that a NBA player is more popular and dominant than a Christian Pastor. Even though he didn't pursue his career in becoming a Christian Pastor, he was still a humble Christian man that took more of his young talents into the NBA where he can only play for a period of time where which he can become a pastor at an older age. Until Jeremy told his parents in his junior year of high school that he played basketball for his school his parents never evidenced him playing until then. As read the year after he told his parents that he played basketball his parents started to come to more of Jeremy’s basketball games and also evidenced him leading the school to a division championship for the first time in 22 years.

          Jeremy Lin has really become my biggest inspiration because no matter what happen in his life he still pushed through to pursue his dreams. After listening to his life story and Christian Testimony I have pushed myself into practicing daily trying to improve my basketball skills while I try to stay on track with my book work instead of ball work. As they all say books before everything. :)

1. In your opinion, what made the Declaration of Independence successful and/or a failure?

I believe the declaration of independence was successful because many high classed important citizens of America agreed to it. If the declaration of independence was not signed by all those people there will be no such thing as the declaration of independence. Some of those people probably didn't care about what it meant so since everyone was signing it they followed along and signed it. All the men that wrote and signed the declaration of independence could have been executed for what they have been doing because they were still considered British citizens. Therefore they could have been hung for writing and signing it. What i believe the British wanted to come out from the declaration of independence was just freedom. Everyone wanted some kind of freedom no matter if there was a lot of freedom or just a tiny bit more than what they had before. So in my opinion i believe the declaration of independence was successful because part of where we live now probably wouldn't be here today.

Blog#2: What does it say about a country to support a person/holiday such as Columbus?

For a country to celebrate and support a holiday for a person such as Christopher Columbus it represents a lot of respect to that person. That particular individual must have done a lot to effect or change this world to as it is to be now. If Christopher Columbus hadn’t of went back to Portugal to tell some of the people he has found new land what would have happened? If Columbus hadn’t of announced that he found new land and named it the Americas, what would the place we are on be called? Will we even be here? If Columbus did not know about the Americas or did not come back a second time to the Americas with more people, food, pets, and goods would the Native Americans be alive then or lack their goods which they did not contain? I believe celebrating and supporting a holiday for a particular individual is a great idea if they really did what people assumed they accomplished. The least we can do it give them respect in ways that we do in the today world.  

Blog#1: What are your feelings/thoughts/opinions about your group's proposal on Columbus day?

In my group our proposal was that we should not have a holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus only because he did not take part in most of the discovery to the Americas. We believe he was the only one that gave the effort to announce that he found new land and he himself named it the Americas. The Native Americans were most definitely on the land of the Americas first because from our research it stated when Christopher Columbus discovered some land, that he later named the Americas, left about 50 out of his 90 crewmen to start a new colony. After going back to Portugal to bring more people with him he came back to see 50 men that tried to start a colony on that piece of unknown land dead. Killed by a group called the Native Americans which Christopher Columbus did not know was there. I believe Christopher Columbus had more authority and money to announce that he discovered new land which the Native Americans could have done if they had the same power. My final thought about our proposal is that we should not celebrate a complete holiday for Christopher Columbus, but to remorse the Native Americans more.