Update: Going On Break

       Hey readers. So I recently gone back to school full-time for this fall. Seeing all the syllabuses of my classes, I noticed that I most of my time will be dedicated to studying. So for the fall, I will be going on break on making posts. I do plan on coming back around December. However, I will make a few posts here and there if I do have some extra time aside from studying. Until I officially return to posting daily after my fall semester, I hope you get to read previous posts you haven't read and spread the word about it. Hope you have a great fall season. Thank you.

Interview of the Week: #TalkThursday: Building homes and nation-building after Haiyan

Creating An Opportunity; Not Waiting For One

         In life, things don't go the way we plan it to be. Eventually, we are pushed into a corner where we feel that there is no way to escape. We then wait for the perfect opportunity to leave the "corner". As time goes by, we continue to wait. If we're lucky, we're given an opportunity. Most of the time, most people are still waiting.  

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         Few people do stop waiting for an opportunity. They realize that creating one is the only way out of the "corner." Tony Meloto is one of those few people. Almost every year, the Philippines experiences a natural disaster. These events damage people's homes and overall livelihood. The government and international relief may not be enough to restore the damages. That's when Tony Meloto comes in.

Black White Guy In America: Helping Men End PMO/NoFap

Shares Tips And Progress

      I posted a couple a weeks ago about a channel dedicated to providing tips and strategies to quitting PMO(Porn, Masturbation, Orgasm)/fap to their audience: NoFap Academy. NoFap Academy provided their information as if they were a teacher while their audience was their students. I'm not saying that this is not a bad thing. But I'm sure there are some viewers who would like to see a You-tuber undergo the "no fap" process along with them at the same time.

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      You-tuber, Black-White-Guy-In-America (BWGIA) posts videos weekly of his progress of quitting PMO/no fap. A majority of his posts are titled of how long it has been since he had done PMO. Like NoFap Academy, BWGIA also provides tips and strategies that he used to maintain quitting PMO/no fap. BWGIA states what he's been doing to replace his addiction. Sharing his current activities (ex. working out) and his results from those activities (ex. muscles getting more ripped) really add value that he "walks the talk." This in turn gives viewers trust and faith that they to can quit PMO/fap as well.  

Documentary of the Week: Making a Career out of Homelessness (RT Documentary)

The Poor Helping The Poor

    Due to the changing status of the economy, there had been an increase of homeless people. One certain culture that had always been maintained was the creation of a small community living on land that doesn't legally belong to them. This small community live in tents and rely on donations as a source of receiving food and various resources. This small community is called "Tent City."

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       This week's documentary covers the lives of the homeless living in Tent City. Many of the "residences" of Tent City are culturally diverse. I say residence because these individuals create a sense of belonging as they situate themselves in tents with their belongings. Not to say that all are new to living in Tent City. There are some individuals that have lived there for years. Many have their own story of how they ended up being homeless.

Interview of the Week: YouTube FanFest 2013 (Singapore) - Ryan Higa Interview part 1 and 2 Sigapore

For Starting You-tubers

        Successful You-tubers, such as Ryan Higa and Nicko's Kitchen, have inspired many people to start their own YouTube channel as a means to a source of income and to live their dreams. These dreams can range from simply becoming famous to making a living creating film. 

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     The road to being a you-tuber may have been traveled by many people but it's not truly cemented. You-tube is a forever changing media form from trends to how you-tubers get paid. This week's "interview of the week" provides insights from Ryan Higa and Rob Nixon about their YouTube career. Their insights can provide vital information that a starting you-tuber should be aware as one's builds their YouTube career.   

Update for the week

    Hey readers. Just a heads up, there will be no You-tuber recommendation written for this week. I will be posting the other posts of this week soon.

                                                                                                                          Jedboy

Documentary of the Week: UFO HUNTERS-Aliens & Extraterrestrial Activity Special Science - Documentary Films

Unidentified Submerged Objects

         

      Society generally had heard about UFOs. Yet even the term, USO, is hardly heard of. In this documentary, the UFO hunters team cover the topic of Unidentified Submerged Objects around the area of Catalina Island, California. Catalina Island is a big tourist-attracting area. With that said, on top of California being one of the biggest populated states in the country, it's no surprise that a UFO/USO sighting would  most likely be seen by many people. The UFO hunters team interviews a couple of witnesses that had seen, drawn, and even had first hand experience with a USO.

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No posts this week.

   Hi readers. Today is my birth date so there will be no posts for this week. Stay tuned for next week. Enjoy your weekend.

                                                                                                                   - Jedboy

Interview of the Week: Victor Kim Part 1 and 2

For Inspiration

         Many of us strive for success. Sometimes we need to hear some inspiring philosophies from someone who's about to become a big star. Victor Kim, renaissance man, was on his way to going big until he became inactive in YouTube and social media a few years ago. Even though he doesn't keep in touch to those who he inspired, I feel that his philosophy, "Kingdom Mentality", has and is still continuing to touch his fans.

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Documentary of the Week: River Shark Attacks- Monster Quest

Sharks In The River

          There have been incidences throughout the years going back as 1900's of shark sightings on inland rivers. It seems that the rate of sharks moving farther away from the ocean is increasing. In the introduction of the documentary (doc.), a fisherman shows a picture of how many sharks he had captured in the river inland of Louisiana. There are environmental changes happening around the world from droughts to super typhoons. But I wonder what complications arise with the increase of sharks present on in-land rivers.

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Nofap Academy: Your Guide to Quitting Porn and Masturbation.

Sexuality Freedom

         Sexuality is everywhere from TV commercials to easy access to pornography from the internet. This wasn't the case a couple of centuries ago. During the British Victorian Era, people considered porn as seeing a picture of woman's ankle (1). Now you get more than just the ankle. Society (excluding certain countries/states that ban porn) has the freedom to look up not just any pornography but the ones that fulfill their fantasies. But like anything in excess, this sexuality freedom can come with a price.  

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Interview and Documentary of the Week: Cancelled for this week.

      Hey everyone. This week there will be no posts for the interview and documentary of the week. Have a good rest of your day and stay tuned for next week.

                                                                                                   - Jedboy

Rappler: Filipino News in English

Discovery

         A few months back, I searched on YouTube for videos that can fill me in on the latest scoop of the pork barrel scandal. Most of the videos were in Tagalog (I can't understand Tagalog fluently). Few videos were available when the newscasters spoke in English. However, they would only speak a little English and mostly Tagalog. 

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        Weeks past and I had given up on finding a news source that covered Filipino news in English. Then at random, I stumbled to a blog that covered not just Filipino news but also news around world. While at their blog, I discovered that they had some YouTube videos of some news coverage. I was finally relieved. I found Rappler. 

Documentary of the week: "Kalisud"- A documentary of Poverty in Philippines

Update:

      Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed reading the "interview of the week" segment. Now I will also be starting another form of daily post called "Documentary of the week." Basically I will write about what documentary I've watched during the week with my reflections and brief description of what to expect. So now to this week's documentary of the week.


Poverty in the Philippines:

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       The documentary states, "In 2012, almost 28% of Filipinos remain poor." (1). The definition of poor based on the Philippines government criteria was also stated in the video. But watching that "definition" shown through the video is very thought and emotional provoking.

Interview Video of the Week: Humanitarian Crisis: North Korea's Refugees Featuring Sunna An

Update:

   Hey viewers. I plan on writing posts of interviews I watch and recommend for the week. I will still be posting recommendations of underground you-tubers weekly as well. So now to the first interview video of the week.


For those concerned: 

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    The interview is for those who are interested in knowing what is going on with North Korean defectors in Asia. I also recommend this to those who already have a general understanding on the issue. It provides an update of current trends that are occurring now.

M.I.A. and update

             My apologies for missing last week's posts. I've been caught up with something at the moment. So there will also be no posts for this week as well. Hopefully, I will settle things that I need to do so I can get back to making posts next week. Until then, enjoy the rest of the week.

                                                                                                           - Jed

Frank Legend: An Up and Coming Legend

The Latino Timothydelaghetto:

       You-tuber Timothydelaghetto has been busy with making a variety of projects from short skits to working on a TV show. Because of the current schedule, Timothy hasn't been posting as much vlogs as much as he used to; then came along Frank Legend.

      Now I'm not saying that Frank Legend is a replacement of Timothydelaghetto. I feel that he's feeding the audience that Timothy had attracted to YouTube. And since Timothy hasn't been posting vlogs, the audience generally is getting hungry. The audience I'm talking about is mostly teens to late 20's who are into street wear, hip-hop, and/or sex/relationships.

         One can argue that it's not accurately correct to be comparing Timothydelaghetto and Frank Legend. Timothy's vlogs some Q and A's about relationships from and to his audience. Frank covers topics, like relationships, to his audience with a general approach. What I can say is that Frank has a similar style that resembles very much like Timothy's.

For Virgins In Society

The Issue At Hand:

        With the assistance of YouTube, anyone can voice out their opinions, express one's feelings, and issues that one wishes to get off their chest. One particular issue that started to become publicly voiced out on, over the recent years, is the frustration of being older and still a virgin. Now there are many people that will have a lot to say why virgins are virgins. In the first half of this post, I wanted to first introduce 3 You-tubers who openly admitted to being a virgin and their reasons why.

Fear Is Easy. Hope Is Real: Jasonchumusic.

Discovery

         One day I was going through a marathon of Fung Brothers' videos. I stumbled to a couple of videos I haven't seen yet. One of them was a video that featured an Asian guy sharing his experiences of being a Yale college student.

Here's a link to that video titled "IVY LEAGUE COLLEGE 101" from the FungBrosComedy Channel: 

      Towards the end of the video, the Fung brothers suggest to check out the guy's youtube channel that provided his works of music. The first video that showed up was titled "Red Lines." After watching the music video, I got the notion that he stood out more than most rappers.

Kick Back, Relax and Listen to Birocratic

Discovery        

    There was a video that was recommended to watch because it started to go viral. It portrayed the comparison between people's general perspective of how "going to the beach" will be like versus people's general experience of how the beach is really like.

Here's a link to the video made by buzzfeedvideo: 

                 

   The video was cool and all but what really caught my attention was the background music. I checked out the description of who made the music and it read: "Round 3" by birocratic.

Underrated Island Music Artist: Justin James

           It must have been around the early episodes of the first season of Iris when I discovered Justin James. The Korean show played one of his tracks, "Love Me More" as a background music. I thought that the song was pretty chill. I then searched on YouTube for that song weeks after just to listen to it again. With that I discovered more great songs by this artist.

           So here's a little bit of who he is. Justin James is originally from Canada. At 18 years of age, he moved out to the Caribbean. He was always into surfing and overall beach lifestyle so moving out there was perfect for him. One day he got attacked by a shark while surfing. He was bedridden for a while. His grandma gave him a guitar to pass the time. Long hours of playing made Justin realized that he had a talent for it. An artist from within was discovered.
         Overall music genre is composed of island/Caribbean/light rock songs. He's got a raspy voice that has the potential to sing for hard rock but still matches well with his songs. Inspiration comes from the love for surfing, beach life, and his overall experience living in the Caribbean. It's relaxing listening to his songs. Surprisingly, he currently has 616 YouTube subscribers and 147,471 total views so you most likely haven't heard of him. I recommend you check out his songs. Hopefully it'll explain why I call this guy an underrated island music artist.

•  Here's a link to his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/justinjamesmusic

•  Main website for more info.: http://justinjamesmusic.com/bio.html

• More bio info. about him: http://www.artistdirect.com/artist/bio/justin-james/2824580

             

          

Youtubers FungBrosComedy: The Conductors of the Asian American Voice.

          So one of the things I wanted to do in this blog is talk about you-tubers. For this post I would like to talk about the following group: FungBrosComedy. These guys consist of two brothers, Andrew Fung & David Fung, and occasionally their childhood best friend, Richie Lee. Their comedic material generally consists of Asian American culture, experience and perspective.
        For example, FungBrosComedy made a recent video about the list of activities Asian Americans did during the "AZN pride" era with guest star, Lianne Lin. It was a response to the AZN pride article made by Kimberly Wang and Tanya Chen. One of the activities listed was listening to the "Got Rice?" song. Even though I was too young to be part of the "AZN pride" era, I still recalled that song. It took me way back.
       Now if you don't know what AZN pride is about then I recommend watching their video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHeFRx-YVrY&list=UU9avFXTdbSo5ATvzTRnAVFg
It will be the first step into getting hooked at the many videos that bring light to what it is like to be an Asian American. The link to the AZN pride article will be provided by the description box of the video. Enjoy.

My first blog post.

Why hello. My name is Jed P. Merene. This is my first blog. It's pretty exciting for me because there are a lot of topics that I would like to talk about on a daily basis. I'm also hoping that one day I would get paid to do this as well. Many bloggers had already been very successful to this form of career.  Although I am aware the potential negative feedback that may come with expressing my opinions, it will still be worth it. I also would like to use blogging as a way to promote other businesses that I would to venture hopefully in the nearby future.  Until then, I want to just practice the art of blogging. The adventures that await for me in the journey are endless. The first step I want to focus on are consistency and courage to continue on against procrastination and self doubt. So I hope you join me in this journey I plan to venture. It's going to be worth the ride.