Anna Lee: Airplanes

The world’s first airplane made by the Wright brothers on December 17, 1903 was a big invention in transportation. Since then, a variety of airplanes have been produced. Some people may think taking the airplane is dangerous because the risk involved. However, it is reported that the total number of accidental deaths by other means of transportations is more than those by air. It is expected that the majority of people would take airplanes when they travel. Airplanes have changed people’s lives in two major ways.

Taking Airplanes is timesaving and promotes economic development Airplanes are timesaving means of transportations because flying is fast and easy. It takes about twenty to 26 hours from Asia to North America by air, comparing to one week by ship. Therefore, people can easily travel from one place to another place. Airplanes make touring, studying abroad, doing business, attending conferences and other events possible. As a result, it promotes economic development.

However, taking airplanes causes some inconveniences in people’s lives. It is uncomfortable to sit in a narrow seat for a lengthy trip. The muscles may become tense and joints stiff from the hours of sitting in the same position. Fatigue and discomfort may arise. Jetlag is also a common complication after traveling by air. Another problem involved the complicating process such as one needs to book a ticket in advance, and most of the time, the ticket is nonrefundable. Moreover, one needs to arrive at the airport one or two hours ahead, depending on domestic or international flight. In addition, the expensive fare is not affordable for everyone. The round-trip fare from Taiwan to Toronto is about CAD 1500, so it is surely I will not use it as often as I use other means of transportations such as buses or trains.

In conclusion, traveling by air is faster and easier which brings people closer. Although it has some inconveniences, taking the airplane is inevitable in the modern society. The good news is some companies such as the Singapore Air, recently developed much more comfortable seats for their VIP guests. Therefore, if one can afford the fare, traveling by air will be an enjoyable thing to do.

Bessie Chan: Learning from the Past

Learning about the past (by Bessie Chan) Date:6-11-2007
The present life is different from the past. Technology has improved our quality of life, and the problems we face nowadays are totally different from the past. For example, it is impossible to find any realistic solution about the predicament of global warming from the ancient great empires because they knew nothing about the problem. It sounds reasonable, right? But it is also possible to learn valuable idea from the past. Although many people think that learning about the past has no value for those of us in the present, studying the history reasonably leads us to a more successful life.

Learning from others' successes directs us to the way of success. It is true that ¡§Every man I meet is in some way my superior¡¨ (Ralph Waldo Emerson). Great people of the past are our superior. The reasons for their success give us hints to the way of success. Their characters and attitudes are the model that our youngster should imitate and learn. Furthermore, it is commonly known that student who studying ¡§Political¡¨ should have a deep knowledge about the history. Every government facing predicament will ask the ¡§Wh¡¨ questions such as ¡§What would the previous brimming government have done if they are faced the same problem?¡¨ A successful government learns the secret of success from the previous rulers.

Learning from others' failure keep us from making the same mistake again. No one wants to taste the bitter experience of failure. It is true that ¡§He that plants thorns must never expect to gather roses¡¨. So, what we should do is not making the same mistake that led to failure. Moreover, the society is more likely to give a second chance for those juvenile offenders but tends to agree to have a harder retribution on recidivist. These imply that everyone is expected to learn from the failure and won¡¦t make the same mistake again. I believe that ¡§Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it¡¨.

To sum up, although learning about the past does not necessarily lead to a successful life, there can be little doubt that knowing more about the success and failure of the past directs us to a brimming life with less regret.

Susan Lee: A Decision

The story of 'The lotus eater', written by Somerset Maugham, tells the story of Thomas Wilson who visited Capri Island located at the Bay of Naples. He was so enchanted with the place that he resigned from his job, sold his house and then used his savings to buy the annuity. He decided to live which would enable him to live the rest of his life without any cares on Capri. He saved just enough money to survive for a set period; and, he lived happily for twenty-five years in a cottage. After his annuity expired, he remained in the cottage until the owner finally told him that he had to leave. Then he tried to commit suicide unsuccessfully by setting fire to the cottage. Assunta, the land lady, and her husband helped him to survive. Finally, he became misfit and antisocial; after six years later, he died under the beautiful moonlight. The Thomas Wilson's tragic end was the result of his choice.

Tomas Wilson may have wanted to avoid boring lifestyle, so he was in pursuit of leisurely life in Nature. Wilson's life led in his adopted home of Capri was a boring daily routine. He was a common place bank manager and he wanted to escape the monotonous life. Also, before his wife died, he had never left his home because his wife did not like travelling. Also, he thought that he felt lonely until he was thirty-four years old; therefore, he could not do exactly what he wanted. He was really cautious about his decision to go to Capri and then he settled the matter after he read a history book, Marion Crawford. He fell in love with the beautiful place at first sight and made up his mind to leave his London life and income behind in exchange for enjoying a leisure time on Capri.

However, Tomas Wilson suffered from very difficult time as a result of his decision. He lost living expense when his annuity expired but he could easily borrow money for some years. As time went by, he could not have any credit anymore; besides, it made him lose his dignity in his relationship with other people. He had no mental capacity, so he was taken to the hospital. After that, he lived in horrible condition. Assunta, the land lady, and her husband took a pity on him, so they let him stay in a woodshed and shared their food to repay his kindness. However, Assunta's husband drove him too hard as a servant so that Wilson had to carry water and clean up the cow-shed and other hard work. Futhermore, he became the antisocial.

Maugham describes Wilson as enjoying his life on the island for the first fifteen years; however, he never shows any sign of regret for the fateful decision that which he made . However, I think that the Wilson's choice to spend his life following a life of leisure on Capri brought his tragic end. Life cannot be led without money or circumstances. In fact, many people can take controll of their lives by managing money and mastering their circumstances. From this point of view, Tomas wilson could not control all his possession.

Anne Lee: Shame

Why did Richard feel ashamed in the story "Shame"?
Anne Lee
The story "Shame" is about how Richard Gregory learned shame in his childhood. Although Richard had a single mother and suffered from poverty, he did his best to keep his pride. He also wanted to look nice to Helen who was his classmate and had everything everybody wanted. However, his naive intention ended up bringing shame to him in front of Helen and other classmates. After he learned shame in his class, Helen became his driving force to get out of poverty for the next twenty-two years. As far as I understood, Richard felt shame because everybody pitied his poverty, and he was too late to help other when he can do.

Richard was ashamed when his whole class felt sorry for his poverty. He always tried to look like a normal boy, just like other children in his class. Despite the fact that he did not have water to wash his only piece of clothes and heat to dry it up during winter, he managed to wash it everyday to look clean before Helen. Although his father was not there to support his family and even his donation, he shined shoes for his family and "buying a dad" for donation. Moreover, he did not want others' sympathy but respect. He felt good when he thought he could donate money to top Helen's. Friday afternoon's washing the blackboard in his classroom made him feel important. However, he could not pretend to be a normal boy anymore due to his teacher's insensitive mention about his being on relief and his having no dad in the class. From that time, he was a miserable poor boy with no daddy, relying on other's help. He was so ashamed that he did his best to impress Helen.

In another way, Richard felt sick about himself when he was too late to help a wino when he was capable to do so. After his bitter lesson, when he encountered the opportunity of helping a more pitiable wino, he waited too long to help him. The wino had already paid with his blood and shame. Richard had suffered that kind of embarrassment long time before, but he could not help another poor person properly. It is like that his teacher and classmates intended to help him but made him ashamed. Therefore, he was ashamed again about himself.

To sum up, Richard was a kind of independent boy with high self-esteem. His ego could not allow others' sympathetic help. When he felt others' pitiable eyes on him, he felt shame. When he could not offer his help in an appropriate way, he was ashamed. Anyway, it is admirable that he had that kind of strong soul which could turn shame into power..

Sergey Kazakov: The Lotus Eater

Sergey
Why did Thomas Wilson choose to live a life of happiness and what were the consequences?

Somerset Maugham in his novel "the Lotus Eater" has aroused old philosophical question – how to live ours lives? Great majority of us, despite being unsatisfied with our lives, think that it could be only one way - as it goes. But only few of us are really trying to change it, to take our fate in our own hands. Is it possible to reach this goal? Author analyzed this not very common situation in example of Mr. Thomas Wilson, an absolutely ordinary person, who seems to be one of us. Mr. T.Wilson had tried to solve this problem by cutting off all boring things of his life. He took all advantages of time for preparation his "happy life" – he analyzed the situation from different points of views and made his decision in absolute agreement with his desires. But despite Mr.Wilson’s reasons to live a "happy life", his approach could not be regarded as absolutely successful.
Although this question had not been discussed in the novel in full details we can suggest that it was only one of many possible ways to build up a "happy life", which in the biggest way was up to Mr. Wilson’s personality and suit his mentality. His dull life in grey smoky London, his everyday boring duties went in contradiction with beauty and splendor of southern Italy – gorgeous nature, lovely weather, friendly people and atmosphere of leisure and joy. According to the story this occurred not long after his wife’s death and maybe it was his first visit abroad. He was charmed, fascinated! An other reasons which influenced his decision, had to do with his character – he was selfish. Even his daughter’s death did not disturb him a lot; despite the fact that he spoke about his wife with respect, he did not felt any remorse because of her early death; he hated and despised his mother-in-law. He was an ordinary man, "common place", as S.Maugham characterized him, without any bright abilities and without any tiny will to achieve something which needed a scruple of efforts. He did his work only for living – the only one thing which he mentioned during his long conversations was remark that he needed 37 minutes to reach his work by walking. So this ordinary, unsatisfied, unambitious person without any close relationships in the whole world had chosen his own way of living – he decided not to struggle with obstacles, but to cut them off, to build up "happy life", which totally consist of pleasurable things.
Full consequences of his decision became evident not so fast. At first he was quiet happy with his life – all had moved in accordance with his plan. He enjoyed food, his tiny living place, small measure of pleasures such as books, tobacco and wine. He did not allow anybody even women to disturb his peaceful and quiet existence. I suppose that during this period he was quite happy in his own way. But as time passed his troubles began. And the main problem was the lack of money. Consequences were dreadful –a once respectful man became a "vegetable". He lost all his dignity, self-respect. The finish was expectable – death in the dirt. I even felt a relief that this had occurred at last – it is difficult to see a man without any trace of humanity. We feel that it was reasonable – T.Wilson was not able to take into account all consequences of his idea of "happy life".
But can we be sure that it was the only one possible way of events? No. We can imagine that he would be wiser and he would not be in such kinds of troubles. Would he be successful with his idea in this case? Can "happy life" be built by this method? The supposed answer should be "No". When you are cutting some troubles from your life, other ones became troubles which you had not regarded as troubles before.

Wang-Tai Lee: Think Before Choosing Home Schooling

Think Over Before Taking Home Schooling

In the ancient time, education stemmed from home; people learned things from their parents and siblings while farming, hunting and cooking. Being dissatisfied with that, people went to churches, wizards’ places, or some wise men’s houses to learn more. Schools, therefore, were developed gradually. They have played a great role in civilization history for thousands of years. Until recently, again, people were dissatisfied with the school systems, and some children are being taken out of school. Home schooling is becoming an issue in the education arena. Still, I never think home schooling is a good idea for three reasons.

First, a huge sense of alienation is widening everywhere because of urbanization and computerization, and the idea of home schooling will worsen them. People made conveniences of the inventions of modern technology in their lives wind up isolating themselves from the society. In addition, most of the families have one or two children now, so the kids are very lonely and isolated at home. However, human beings are social animals; both individual’s success and civilization developments depend on effective team works. A nice teamwork depends upon nice people skills. Thus, it is a good idea for parents to start looking for peers for their children, and even a little bit peer pressure in classroom is becoming useful for children’s growing up under such circumstance. Actually, schools provide good places to train children and practice team works. Home schooling doesn’t have such functions.

Secondly, political and economic stability depend on some major ideas, and home schooling cannot help to build them up. Those ideas such as majority rules and respecting minority, rule of law, team works, among others are necessary and extremely important. Without them, no government, company, international organization can operate efficiently; besides, the people in developing countries will keep suffering from dictatorship and despoliation. Those ideas are easier to know than to do; therefore, children need to be trained not just taught. In another words, in order to build up those basic ideas, our children need to be trained in schools for years through many different kinds of classes. People can learn some ideas in groups not just by one-on-one teaching method. Schools are the most supportive system in this world and can hardly be replaced.

Thirdly, the need of home schooling will be eliminated gradually because of the changing methods in schools. There are two main reasons for home schooling; one is the common use of modern IT (information technology) at home; the other is the unity teaching components in school. Now, distance education can provide flexible places and flexible time for teaching and learning activities. Moreover, school systems have become more varied. More and more schools allow different classroom philosophy so that parents can choose the most suitable one for their children accordingly.

As a matter of fact, our world is becoming a global village; globalization plus urbanization put a lot of strangers and foreigners together in the same community. School systems are one of the inevitable venue for parents and students to meet together. What’s more, there will be a device letting us to carry whole library’s knowledge in our palms; we can get it almost instantly by just using one finger only. Therefore, everyone is knowledgeable in the foreseen future, but I still believe the diverse schools are even more in need instead of none at that time.

Bessie Chan: Wilson's Choice

Wilson’s choice (by Bessie Chan) Date:12-10-2007
In W. Somerset Maugham’s story “The Lotus Eater”, Thomes Wilson decided to follow a life of pleasure but he confronted a sad ending. Wilson, a commonplace bank manager who had boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands, decided to have his early retirement at the age of thirty-five. He chose to live a life of happiness for twenty-five years on the beautiful Capri. At the age of around sixty, he committed suicide unsuccessfully and died six years later. He, on the whole, got what he deserved.

There were a few reasons for him to make this decision. First of all, he had great passion for the beauty of nature and happiness. He fell in love with the little island of Capri at first sight when he was having his summer holiday at the age of thirty-four. He also realized that “Leisure” was the aim of his work and his life. In addition, he had no one dependent on him any more. His wife had died when he was thirty-one. His kid went to live with her grandmother. The only one that he was responsible for was himself.

The consequences of his choice were amazing. He chose to live a life of happiness for twenty five years in the beautiful Capri. He had his own little place to live. He had a servant to look after his house work. He had leisure life to read a great deal on all sorts of subjects. He had time and patience to play piano. He had enough money to enjoy tobacco and wine.He had energy to walk on the mountainside in the moonlight, He had the serenity to enjoy the beautiful scence of Capri…. However, he faced a sad ending in the last few years of his life. When he was sixty, his annuity expired. He managed to hang on borrowing money from others for something over a year. Afterward, he could get no more credit; no one wanted to lend him any more money. Then, he committed suicide by burning charcoal in his tiny badroom. He was found alive and was taken to the hospital but finally recovered. He, no longer in his right mind, “endured to live like a hunted animal for six years”. He was found dead lying peacefully on the beautiful mountainside after a full-mooned night.

As said by the author, W. Somerset Maugham, “on the whole we all get what we deserved”. Wilson got what he deserved too. He lived the excellent life while he still had the capacity and the vigour to enjoy life. His passion for the beauty of nature was fully satisfied. Life offers happiness to everyone in the simple and natural things, and he successfully found it. He had attained his only objective of life-his own happiness. He was such a wise man that had enjoyed happiness, which very few people know where to look for and fewer still find it for twenty-five years. In my opinion, the only thing that he might possibly have regretted was the moment he hesitated after he committed suicide.