Ammar writes stuff

Short writing on various topics

[ammaralishah]

Judgmental Me, Judgmental You

*I write this on my toilet so please don’t judge (get it?)*

Ah, the internet! A truly wonderful place indeed where everyone is respected and loved..oh wait. April 1st is over, so no need for this crap.

I’d just like to point out that we are really shitty people. By “we” I mean everyone who uses the internet. We’re extremely judgemental, biased and huge hypocrites. Although we might claim to be “civilized” and “liberal” and talk about “SDGs” and shit, when it comes down to people, we’re extremely shitty.

First I used to tell myself that I’m not judgemental, I’m just highly opinionated. But that’s just a nifty fix we have for a guilty conscience. The truth is we’re horrible people who talk about things that we pretend to care about but give zero shits about. We judge anything and anyone that is unfortunate enough to fall under our line of sight.

There’s no fix to this. Nor a solution. We’re just shitty people. Me. You, and everyone else too. Posting this doesn’t make me any better. Sharing it won’t make you.

I’m not sorry.

[ammaralishah]

Dear You: Why you.

Dear You,

You know who you are. I want to write you this because I know you(and other people) ask me why I choose you among many others. Here’s my answer.

I choose you because you’re everything I can only aspire to be. Speaking very honestly, you’re far from the person I had imagined you to be - and that’s what makes you perfect.

I love it how you can’t even dare to think of hurting someone. I love it how you want to be everyone's friend. I love it how you find everyone nice and no one rude and how you care about everyone's feelings. I love it when you want to be everyone's friend. I love it how you always see the good in people.

I love how you giggle ever-so-beautifully at something that even mildly amuses you. 

I love it how you shout my name ever so slowly when I do something that amuses you, and I love it when you smile over all those little things that would make not many happy. I love it how even the smallest accomplishments bring joy to you and how your joy brings joy to me. I love how you want to do everything that makes me happy.

You may not be the prettiest. You may not be the cutest. But you surely are the most beautiful person I have ever met.

I love you.

And This is why I choose you.

[ammaralishah]

The power house that was Chester

I know this is going to be my second post about him in two days but I still can’t believe it. Chester is dead.

I’ve spent a lot of time listening to his music after his death. In these two days, I’ve understood more of his music than I had in the past decade that I had been listening to him, but there’s also one other thing I noticed: His voice was a powerhouse.

Let me explain. 

Listen to this (it starts at 00:23). There’s no music so you get to hear his voice clearly. Can you feel the energy flowing through it? I want you to scream right now, the hardest you can - is it powerful enough? No. You may have even hurt yourself trying to. That’s what I’m talking about. People think he screamed in his songs, but he didn’t. His voice was just that powerful.

A few more examples:

Just listen to the chorus in this one ^

“FInally let you go!“ ^

One last example ^

I think I’ve made my point. We’ve lost a great voice and a great person. The chances of a voice as power full as this coming back are slim. RIP Chester. 

[ebilgatoloco]

I always thought his vocal range was amazing compared to most singers.

[ammaralishah]

In an interview in May with Elvis Duran, he said that whenever he was singing, he thought to himself that he has to go higher than this. “Higher!” he would tell himself. He laughed so much during that interview it’s hard to see what he’s going through - but if you look into his eyes in his pictures and videos, you can see he was scared of something. He was not fine. The only time you don’t see that in his eyes is when he was on stage, singing.

You can watch the interview here if you want:

[ammaralishah]

The power house that was Chester

I know this is going to be my second post about him in two days but I still can’t believe it. Chester is dead.

I’ve spent a lot of time listening to his music after his death. In these two days, I’ve understood more of his music than I had in the past decade that I had been listening to him, but there’s also one other thing I noticed: His voice was a powerhouse.

Let me explain. 

Listen to this (it starts at 00:23). There’s no music so you get to hear his voice clearly. Can you feel the energy flowing through it? I want you to scream right now, the hardest you can - is it powerful enough? No. You may have even hurt yourself trying to. That’s what I’m talking about. People think he screamed in his songs, but he didn’t. His voice was just that powerful.

A few more examples:

Just listen to the chorus in this one ^

“FInally let you go!“ ^

One last example ^

I think I’ve made my point. We’ve lost a great voice and a great person. The chances of a voice as power full as this coming back are slim. RIP Chester. 

[ammaralishah]

RIP Chester - some words.

Chester Bennington is dead as of July 20, 2017.

I’m at my office as I write this. I'm supposed to be working but I couldn’t so I decided to dedicate some times to the legend himself as I listen to his music on YouTube in the background.

I wasn’t one of the first people to find out about his death nor will I be the last. I wasn’t the first person to be inspired by his music nor will I be the last. I could right now tell you about how his music helped me get through my depression but that would be a lie, but a lot of people close to me have been fighting this illness for a long time and it’s safe to say his music has helped me understand what depression really is. To the people who might be hitting Google trying to find out why he died, well let me save you a trip - He committed suicide. Now I didn’t really save you a trip now did I? Now you want to know why? Why would he do such a thing? Well, I’m going to suggest a better way of finding out.

Start from here. Click on auto play and let the music hit your ears. Listen - listen to about five songs. If you can’t understand the lyrics, well then start here. Listen to him tell you what exactly is the problem. For over two decades he’s been facing depression and substance abuse. His music helped thousand if not millions of people survive. Although he wasn’t understood by everyone, those who did, knew of the brilliance of his music.

For almost two decades he helped and provided his support to those who needed it. His friend Chris Cornell died only a few months ago in a similar way. Chester wrote a heartbreaking letter to him writing that he couldn’t imagine the world without him - and today on his birthday, he committed suicide.

Now that you know everything - here’s a little-opinionated point of view: Chester didn’t die because he took his own life. He died because his fans drove him to that point. His recent song Heavy, was met with a lot of hate from his fans as it was different from his other music. I was proudly not a part of such “fans”. Other than being depressed about other things, this saddened him too. He needed his fans at this time. His friend passed away a few months ago, but his fans just couldn’t provide him with the support. Now the song has 45M+ views.

This just comes to show, we only find out the true value of an artist after he is no more. Chester was lucky enough to be acknowledged by some during his life. We loved you Chester, and always will - RIP.

[ammaralishah]

Subway

Previous post: Control in Relationships

It's Valentine's Day! Well that was me when this day started but probably for a very different reason than yours. This was the day when almost every restaurant was going to offer discounts for couples, and me being the food-loving human I am, could get food for lots less than usual. So I took it to subway with four other friends after school to get two 6-inch subs, at the price of one! 

Free food! Who doesn’t like that?

Now I want you to know that I’ve had Subway before and I’m not a big fan, but my friend said that he’ll get my Sub prepared and I’ll like it. (Spoiler alert: Still didn’t like it much). If you’ve never been to Subway and you’re thinking what do I mean by “prepared”, I’ll explain. At Subway they have everything lined up in front of you, all the veggies and stuff, and you tell the guy to add whatever you want to your sub. So anyway, I’ve tried lots of different combos, but never liked it.

Conclusion, probably staying away from Subway from now.

[ammaralishah]

Control in relationships

There was no post last week because I was busy. You can read the one before that: Results Day

One of my friends was talking to me the other day and he broke the news to me that he was no longer in a relationship with his girlfriend? Why? The tl;dr answer would be too much control. Now before I carry on with the topic, I’d like to make it clear by relationships, I don’t just mean lovers. It can be any kind of relationship - brother/sister, mother/son, teacher/student, etc 

I have this sort of rule, early in any relationship, I make a huge deal of pointing out how much control the other person can have on me. To what extent, will I listen to them. To what extent, would it be healthy for them to tell me what to do. This is very helpful to me and the future of the particular relationship. Everyone in my life has a different level of control over me my parents having the highest and people younger than me(specifically my cousins) having the lowest. If everyone knows how much they can control the other person and stay within that limit, I’m sure relationships would last much much longer.

[ammaralishah]

Results Day

There’s this poem  or spoken word, that’s been stuck in my mind for quite a few years now. I’ve talked about it before and I personally think about it a lot too. Before I talk about this any further,  you should listen to the spoken word.  

Now let those words sink in...

It’s a really thought out poem. It sums up everything I ever have to say about education: Why does a piece of paper hold so much value in our life? Why is result day such a bad day for us?

In my mind, result day should be more of a learning day from normal school days, that’s the day you find out where you fall short in class, but instead it’s death day for students. It’s the day teachers get to take out everything they have in them against the students. 

The sad thing is, the problem isn’t even something we can do much about. It’s companies who can do something about this. What if employers start hiring people based on skill rather than on their college GPA? What is you had to work hard on sharpening a skill rather than writing an eight page report to get that A on your college finals? I’m pretty sure this isn’t how the education system was planned to be but this is what it has turned into. 

4 years of all nighters, cups after cup of caffeine and hours hunched over the computer to get a piece of paper that costs thousands of dollars but doesn’t provide you with the skill needed to earn all that money back. 

In the end, no one is to blame - not the students, not the teacher and not the government: It’s the system, and sadly, we’re just a cog in this murder machine.

[ammaralishah]

Introducing “Tumblr-Tuesdays”

The complete idea has changed so this is just useless but still here for archival purposes - July 15, 2017

Hi! 

My name is Ammar Shah. You may have read something I wrote or may have watched one of my videos or might just know me from outside the digital world! If neither of those are the case, you can read about me here. 

Welcome to my tumblr blog! I plan on writing on various topics here every Tuesday! I chose Tuesday because it starts with “tu” same as Tumblr. I had a lot of fights with myself over Tuesday or Thursday but Tuesday won in the end because of U. 

You might wanna follow this blog so when I make my first post the following Tuesday, it shows up on your feed and for all Tuesdays to come!

Thanks for stopping by! You should go now - Bye!