可爱的强强娃

  Long time not write anything from 13 October till now. Over this period, I have experienced lots of things, both the happiness and the sadness, the sense of achievement as well as the the feeling of failure although sometimes I have tried my best to do all things well. I'm really tired.

  Traffic congestion

  As one of the biggest problems on a global scale, traffic congestion has increasingly raised a growing concern among many people. Traffic congestion has several definitions for example Benekohal( 1997,P.2) suggests ' congestion is that traveler is immobility; it is trains waiting to either station or terminal; it is long lines of stopped or slowly moving vehicles on a freeway, suburban highway or city street’ In accordance with the definition, people can appreciate that traffic congestion is both a social product and a common phenomenon. It is very clear from the above quotation that traffic congestion leads enormous costs which is associated with social as well as economic aspects to the world. Having accentuated the extreme importance of traffic congestion, not only developed countries but also developing countries have invested huge amount of funds to utilize variety of technologies solving this problem. This essay will explore some approaches used by different countries to tackle traffic congestion respectively and identify both their advantages and disadvantages in detail.
  To begin with, the definition of traffic congestion shows that it imposes significantly large costs upon human society which contents both natural, social and economic costs. Take Australia for example, ' the value(2002) for the costs of environmental damage due to air pollution vary greatly between the different emission species ranging from $3 per tonne for carbon monoxide up to high costs of $342 000 dollars per tonne for particulate matter.' (2007, Estimating urban traffic and congestion cost trends for Australian cities, Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics, Canberra) and on the global scale, ' The total congestion" invoice" for the 85 areas in 2002 was $63 billion, an increase from $61 billion in 2001. The 3.5 billion hours of delay and 5.7 billion gallons of fuel consumed due to congestion are only the elements that are easiest to estimate.' ( Jeff Paniati, The FHWA associate administrator for operation, 2004, operational solution to traffic congestion, United States Department of transportation - Federal Highway Administration, viewed 8 August 2008, <http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov> According to above quotation, it is extremely clear that traffic congestion is definitely one of the most expensive problem associated with almost every aspect of people's life and it is high time for all the countries including both developed countries and developing countries to take actions combating with traffic congestion.
  Firstly, in the western society, nearly all the developed countries which are suffering from the traffic congestion have paid substantially more attention to how to solve this problem efficiently. The improvements referred to many social aspects include not only physical facilities making travel more convenient but policies regulating the traffic sequence as well as behaviour of drivers. There are significantly various of approaches solving traffic congestion, for instance, American government have applied a modern technological strategy called Information Gathering and Sharing system which consisted of surveillance, detection cameras, traffic sensors, vehicle probes and infrastructure sensors. This information system which based on a network comprised of large number of points namely information centres that collected the different information gotten by the cameras and sensors from roads and delivered them to the main information centres or database from which every relevant information could be pick out very easily. On one hand, by using this system, the staffs of the traffic departments can measure the highway or road situation every now and then and take the rescue and persuit immediately when accidents or criminal happened. On the other hand, this system allow the traffic policemen of every states to use the traffic information gathering from other states and share the relational information with other departments of the government even the overseas governments. So it is much more convenient to monitor and control nearly everything on the streets and the vocational ability of American traffic departments were greatly improved due to this modern technological information gathering and sharing system. However, every coin has two sides, the downsides of this new technology are also obvious. First of all, the biggest disadvantage of this system is its cost of building which is exceedingly expensive and the cost of its maintainability for what the government must invest large amount of expenditure continuously and over a long period. Secondly, another disadvantage of this approach is the risk of machines. No machine or technology can work correctly forever therefore, having been broken, people can not get the exact information from the facilities and no one knows when the equipments should have been broken so people must undertake the risk.
  In the meantime, the developing countries which faced the same situation also have invested substantially to tackle traffic congestion. Take China for example, Chinese government was keen on finding some efficient methods to solving traffic congestion continuously. For instance, because of the huge number of pedestrian, SHANGHAI government has built lots of pedestrian bridge and walk way for the walkers which is a very good approach solving the traffic problems, however, those bridges and special ways have large costs and heavy structure which made the city crowded and disordered. China has the largest population of cyclists and government made a lot of extra lanes which can isolate the cyclists from the cars or pedestrian or buses to reduce the risk of cngestion for cyclists from other transports although the extra lanes made up the extra room and extra building costs. As to the buses system, the government made efforts too, such as increasing the number of buses, increasing the capacity of buses, increasing the route of the buses and so on. On one side, more buses or longer route made the usage of public transport resources more efficient and reduced the number of private cars but on the other side, they also may lead to the congestion. The last but not the least, to reduce the traffic congestion, Chinese government tried to control the car use by using the drive licence system. This system can control the number of drivers namely the number of cars whereas controlling car ownership by vehicle licence contradicted the improvement of national vehicle industry from which the government could get thousands of hundreds of dollars of tax to increase the city quality. So the developing countries try to keep the balance between advantages and disadvantages of the approaches solving traffic congestion as well.
  In conclusion, in accordance with above, traffic congestion leads large amount of costs to not only the natural environment but also the human society and results to many negative affects to people's life. It is no doubt that fighting with traffic congestion is essential. Both developed countries and developing countries are trying to find some efficient methods to solving this worldwide problem and the approaches they found had many positive effects as well as disadvantages. In my opinion, according to the globalization, all the countries should handle this very big problem together such as having some international meeting periodically and sharing traffic congestion solving experience with mutually. By doing that, countries could find much more efficient ways to dispose traffic congestion much more perfectly.   

  In my current class, I can speak English as much as possible because there are few chinese here, although maybe it is not orthodox English even Korean English, Vietnamese English, or Thai English but it is English! Up to now, just over the period of two weeks, the assignment in our class has already been overladen which include a long academic essay and two presentations, one could have the same topic with the essay and the other presentation with opposite argument could be shorter! For the essay, I can choose one of the following five topics:
  Traffic congestion has become a major problom in most cities.
  Genetically modified food has the potential to eliminate starvation and improve the quality of food production, however there are many problems with this technilogy.
  Water pollution is a major problem.
  Nuclear power will be the energy of 21th century.
  The HIV/AIDS epidemic is a global emergency with which the developing countries are coping less successfully than industrialized countries.
  In my opinion, the genetically modified food and nuclear power are too professional to write well, moreover, the topic of water pollution is pretty good but hard to identify and finally, I chose traffic congestion and I will put the draft of my essay into my blog and welcome to criticize.
   There are three Korean in my class one of which is a researcher and came here to do some research about the policies of Australian government. She has been  greatly interested in Chinese therefor asked me to teach her. Maybe I would refuse this request in general  however during a lapse of four months from I have arrived in Sydney numerous people gave me lots of help from which I gained many benefits so if someone asked me for some help which I can afford, I just did undeniably maybe because of the feeling of help received and I want to give this feeling to others.
  As usual, I visited Marry in her house after my classes for chating which is associated with the culture and history of Australia and I found that Marry not only was a profound clergywoman but also had exceedingly diverse life experience. During her thirty four years studying times, she has been to several countries for education, in terms of language culture studying, Marry have been to American when she was a child and stayed there for two years to learn American history and culture, and then she went to Hong Kong to study Cantonese after that, she came to Tian Jing and studyed in NanKai university eight years for Chinese education. Finally, Marry went to British in oder to study theology in Cambridge university in the period of three years. How colorful life she has!
  I addition, Marry invited me to have dinner with Racial, Jessie and her every Thursday evening from this week onward, so I will have more chances to practice my English. As a result, I really don't know how to express my appreciate for the help, maybe the thing only I can do is just to help others.

Caller : Hello, can I speak to Annie Wan?
Operator : Yes, you can speak to me.
Caller: No, I want to speak to Annie Wan!
Operator: You are talking to someone! Who is this?
Caller: I'm Sam Wan. And I need to talk to Annie Wan! It's urgent.
Operator: I know you are someone and you want to talk to anyone! But what's this urgent matter about?
Caller: Well... just tell my sister Annie Wan that our brother Noel Wan was involved in an accident. Noel Wan got injured and now Noel Wan is being sent to the hospital. Right now, Avery Wan is on his way to the hospital.
Operator: Look! if no one was injured and no one was sent to the hospital, then the accident isn't an urgent matter! You may find this hilarious but I don't have time for this!
Caller: You are so rude! Who are you?
Operator: I'm Saw Lee.
Caller: Yes! You should be sorry. Now give me your name!!

 

 

The article above was quoted from the space of "神の一手 07/02/08".

  Having been put in a new class(AE3a3), I found it difficult to adapt to this strange circumstance immediately not because of new classmates and new teachers but the much more effective and various content which you must study by using completely different software of your spirit of the new class than before. Apart from the projects of listening reading writing and speaking, additionally, we have to stand up to master essay writing and presentation both of which were ever disposed by us nowhere. 

  I have already gotten used to writing the discussion and argument essay in IELTS style, whereas the master essay meant greatly more reading references, much larger vocabulary, and more words, indeed, at least more than triple, although it is inevitable. Essays in IELTS test always refers to the general public issues in our societies which maybe just ask you to find a seasonable or rational solution or make you express of agreement or disagreement with these social problems, by contrast, the acdemic essay needs selecting a acdemic topic which is relevant to your own specialty firstly, and then reading a large amount of  references except for the general material such as newspapers and magazines after which writing out several viewpionts supporting the main topic, of course, examples are essential, finally, working out a conclusion to summarize the whole essay you wrote before.

  Presention, on occasion, is more lovely than the boring essay. The presentation is also based on some handwritings which can not be performed when expressing the presentation to tutors. Similar to the essay, you have to portray some statements refer to your speciality, but it need not be as formal as the essay.

  This afternoon, we spent a class practising how to organize a good presentation as soon as possible in which my topic was to introduce a perfact place in my memory to my classmates for what I wanted to make a introduction about the Terracotta Soldiers and Horses because of the movie of Mummy 3 which named The Tomb Of Dragon Emperor.

  Originally, I have done lots of preparations before my performance effortfully and really looked forward to making a fantastic show.--haha! But maybe because of the nervous, I was standing on the platform without any words for about five minutes. What a bad day!!!

  Up to now, I have been here for about four months in which I have thought at least three things, namely indenpendence, denial to yield and appreciativeness and in deed, I strongly realized the internal distinction of cultural attutides which maybe lead to some misleadings between the western and eastern society. It really is a harsh truth to face! Originally, in my opinion, the view of culture in both western and eastern society could communicate even accompany with each other mutually as well as harmuniously rather than conflict and contradict in many aspects. Apart from sciences and techniques, I mightily want to learn the culture of western countries, especially Australia, as much as possible such as religion, lifestyle, sense of value and so on. For this purpose, we tried creeping into the original life of these civilians and subsequently, feeling their own civilization gradually. However, we are disappointed sometimes.
  Take the beggar for example, I have met several beggars in both genders and from all walks of life in the union as well as outside the supermarket which made me confused that there were so many young people enev teenagers who were wearing the decent clothes and being full of energy prefered to beg food and money rather than improve their life by working and studying. When I was a child, my parents tought me that it was the most fundamental principle that as a person, everyone should endeavour to develop his or her life-standard independently. So, for most chinese people I believe, it is quite hard to understand the reasons why those special beggars chose this special way to live in the best optimum of their whole life and maybe the attitude to this phenomenon, as I said before, is the most classic eastern viewpoint which results from the histoty, culture and sense of value that are inherent in our spirits of our country.
  On the contrary, having consulted with me, the native youngsters in our church expressed their more lenient attitudes than mine even Mary criticized my thinking as well. But I can clearly appreciate that it is part of my original valuable system which can not be changed. To sum up, every nation has special culture which maybe can result in conflict mutually but in the long run I believe that currently, people from every corner of this world get the unique opportunities to experience the significance, benefits even the gap of culure because of the globalization.

  To tell the truth, the Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremony really gave me a very big surprise! It is clear that Beijing Olymoic games is the twenty-nineth event during the olympic history and it is the biggest sport event for humankind in our world. The Olympic Games bring together hundreds of thousands of people from every corner of the world. Not only athletes but also other kind of people such as tourists, citizens, journalists can exchange their cultures, social notions, economic attitudes and individual creativities with each other. Apart from the original importance,Olympic Games has the special significance for China which has both the biggest population and the longest history in our world because this is the first time it is the host of this worldwide event. In The Olympic Games, regardless of the developments, regimes and skin colors, all countries have equal situations and this is the most important feature of it. As the host, I want to say, China try to prepare for this games effortfully and it is undeniable that she does it greatly well. The opening is a fantastic begginning.

  I saw the Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremony in our church and it made me very excited. All the members who applied for seeing this ceremony in church were aggregated in our big hall at about eight o'clock( because of the time zone, the ritual started at ten o'clock in Australia). Firstly, I want to say thanks to Jeenes, Athony and Kevin who did a huge numbers of preparations for our watching event, for instance, they cooked lots of delicious food such as fruit salad, sandwiches and snacks. An other very  important they did was the decorating for our venue.Take the wall decoration for example, they made a lot of colorful flags and then suspended these flags which could make our environment more beautiful on the wall. In the second place, I want to give my gratitude to Marry and Martin who organized all of preparations for us and when I was in our church, I can strongly felt the enthusiastic atmosphere. What's most important, I highly appreciated that our church gave me this chance making me the witness of this sport event.

  Foremost, the firework of opening ceremony gave me mightily firm impression. All of them have made the amazing feelings for us continuously. I think the topicscs of this Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremony were chinese multifaceted culture and the civilization of long standing. From performances of the most famous four inventions, all the audiences can get a graphic acquaintance with chinese ancient technology. By watching the performances of chinese operas, the audiences can deeply have more understanding of chinese grey art. The friends from all over the world also can appreciate the chinese traditional treatment for our guests, namely passion and hospitable welcome.

  The athletes entering process was a very big work. I saw two hundreds and four countries' olympic teams which represented the friendship and equality between all the the nations and I thought all of them must be willing to contribute to the global unity.

  Finally, I want to say something about the ritual in which a very famous chinese male gymnastic athlete( Li Ning) inflamed the main torch of this twenty-nineth Olymoic Games. Li Ning were running around the stadium while rising to the main torch. This procedure represented both peace and development of our globe and that of China. I am really proud of my country and nation.

  Such a fantastic event.

  This is the first birthday in which I am living abroad!

  No presents.

  No friends.

  No delicious foods.

  No celebration.

  No birthday cake.

  Except for two bags of instant noodle and a apple.

  Although there are few interests in my special birthday, I already have the colorful life undeniably!

  I merely want to say happy birthday to me!

    We are having a very big Hot-Pot celebration in the community church tomorrow evening and there will be over twenty teenagers attending this delicious event. Our community church appointed a intellectual lecturer for me and we have a one-hour course every Friday night. The lecturer whose name is Kaven Tan came from Taiwan province and has been Sydney over twenty years. Mr Tan is about fifty five years old and he will has concentrated on teaching me the Theology especially history of the Christianity and in reality, I found it a little boring to study. As opposed to the tedious courses, Mr Tan always shared his life experience with me from which I can appreciate lots of interesting stories. Undeniable, I am extremely lucky because I joint this institute on the second day I have been to Sydney. That is a sunny afternoon. Martin( the clergyman of our church) and his colleagues: Mr Feng and his partner found me in the Rockdale railway station when I was looking at the Public Transport Timetable. They talked to me passionally and not only introduced informations of our community church to me but also invited me to the church. Martin told me that noboday in the church were not my brother or sister moreover everyone in this organization should help others mutually and then I had many brothers and sisters helping me to improve my English ability. Among these friends, Jassie, studying Chemistry in UNSW, is the most helpful one for me. She was from NeiMengGu Regional National Autonomy and gave me lots of help, for instance she gave me various of English studying materials and taught me many good methods which can intensify my English level.
  Apart from Jassie, Marry is a very important person to me too. Marry, the clergywoman in our church, is a sixty-year-old native madame. What's more admirable, Marry has not been married and devoted all her life and spirit to the Lord and researching in Theology. Marry has a mini library which contents above two thousand Theological books. Undoubtably, this is a very big treasure. I talked with Marry several times and felt that she was both a devout prayer and a very wise teacher with enormous quantity of knowledges referring to many aspects of our society, such as Theology, Historical science and Literature.
  Now, stop talking about the church!
  This afternoon, I met Kurt who just finished his journey to Brisbane( The Golden Beach) in the Business faculty. From him I get some current informations about our classmates that someone are preparing to change the campus from UNSW to other universitys and someone are studying the English courses once again. After the chat, I thought the condition of mine in spite myself and then felt huge pressure. The condition is not optimistic and I must try my best to pass the English test as soon as possible. Only by doing that, I could have pretty access to that famous union.

  I don't go to the union, because of the holidies and  the mood of mine.Today is the second day of 10th international World Youth Day which will be through from Monday 14 to Sunday 20 July 2008. Of course,Sydney is the host of this historical week long event. Along with the World Youth Day, all the levels of education including universities and primmary schools in Sydney, made a weekly vacation, so I needn'd go to the university this week.The other reason is that although the service of railway will be substantially enhanced, some routes of bus service are not operatng from today to Friday.Unfortunately, Unersity of New South Wales express services and the Sydney Explorer and Bondi Explorer services are not operating till this weekend.
  This public operation offers not only the drawbacks but the strongpoints to me. On one hand, I could remain the cost of transportation. On the other hand my studying efficincy at home is lower than that in unniversity.This contradictory problem makes me confused.I want to introduce some events of this World Youth Day in follow sentences.Fristly, on Monday namely yesterday, there were not any special activities.Yesterday night,I came back to Rockdale from central by train and there were lots of teenagers on the train in which they were playing games, singing songs, and laughing laudly as if there were no ones in the carriage.I "admired" the naturally alternative instinct of those teens who came from the western developed countries(U.S.A).
  On Tuesday, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney will celebrate the formal opening of Word Youth Day at Barangaroo(Eest Darling Harbour) where there is expected to be as many as 150'000 people. This is the first day of World Youth festival and I think there must be large number of crows in the city this evening.
  On Wednesday, the Catechesis sessions are taking place in the morning,and I think many people will concentrate on these sessions even if I don't know how many persons should participate. The Youth Festival event at city will hold in the afternoon and through to evening. I have already made a plan to take part in the celebrations in evening.
  On Thurday, the Pope is arriving at Barangaroo via a boat that will travel through Sydney Harbour,and then the Pope will make his way from Barangaroo to St Mary's Cachedral and I don't know what the old-fashioned man should do in the Church.
  On Friday, I don't know what will happen.
  On Saturday,there will have an evening Vigil in Randwick Racecourse and Centennial Park and it is said that the Pope is going to attend this ritual at once but I think this information is sceptical.
  On Sunday, there will be a Final Mass in umknown place (haha!).
  It is no doubt that The World Youth Day is one of the most important festivals in our world, I will go to the venue and experiense this worldwide event. 

  This weeknd is special for me. I have paticipated three events. The first event has two parts, former is that I received a certification which can testify my English ability from the language institite last friday afternoon. The later one is that we made a small ritual in which all the members left the connecting ways mutually and took some pictures.The second one is that after Bible studying all of my churchmates and I have been to a caf'e which located in Rockdale for a ralexing time last Friday evening. The last thing is that as a volunteer I took part in a sport clinic which was held by our church and for the kids of this local community yesterday morning. 

  On Friday afternoon, our English teacher,Allan (who is a bit fatter than me in the picture although I already have been a fatty) distributed the certifications which included marks of the final exam and a level of English ability to the whole class. My overall exam mark was "C", so I am satisfied. After confirming the marks and level, we left the private conneting ways such as e-mail adresses, MSN, QQ numbers respectively and then almost everybody made a picture with Allan. Finally, it was decided that we will have held a barbecue next month in the beach. Another happiness was that both Lila and Dafeny who were from ShanDong province and GuangDong province passed the IELTS test, and the boy, Lila whose overall score was 7 made the highest record in our class.Congratulations! At that time, I made a decision that I will have been assiduous in my study of English and try to break this record! Do you want to pray for me? after all the activities, Allan gave me several suggestions that how to improve my English and now, I want to express my thanks to him even if he can't see.
  In the Friday evening, I went to the church and studied the Bible with my churchmates as usual. We finished the studying at about 11 o'clock and Jessie proposed that we could go to the caf'e-bar for a cup of coffee and chat.All of us agreed with her immediately (indeed, I don't know why! hehe!) and then the boys and girls had arrived the destination whin 10 minutes. It is no doubt that we have a really excellent night. Anni who graduated from UNSW is one of the lecturers in this university now. In that evening, she analysed the whole procesure that how to do well in my speciality in the union and told me some good methods for my English studying.Aran, a very strong boy told me the construction of the rugby union in Australia and the rules of this sport. Austrilan rugby is the most popular sport in this country and all the Australian are keen on it. Kiven who have been to Xi'an two years ago and I made a very fervent conversation. He like Xi'an very much although he have stayed in Xi'an for only six days. I introduced the fantasticly delicious foods and several fascinating historical tourst attractions such as the Terracutta Soldiers an Horses in Xi'an and invited him to my homecity noce again. It was half past twelve when we finished our recreation whereas I felt very happy. 

 

   It started raining this afternoon and the radio said that these days should be the most clodest days during this winter in Sydney. Indeed I feeled that the weather was extremely cold. In addition there are not any equipments which can give me any heat. I am not lucky, am I ? However I bought a electrical heater in BIN LEE market this afternoon. I can not tell this information to my landlord and bring this machine into my room subterraneously! This winter will be more attractive for me and that is my secret! 

  This week is the last one of the whole term. I have to say goodbye to my interesting class and many problems appear. Last friday our coordinater came to our classroom and asked us whether stayed at this language institute or leaved respectively. It is about par for the court that the majority of students will leave this institute. Most of them are going to apply for the offers of other universities and some of them will go back China. Only two students in our class will be entitled to start the main courses in next semester because they passed the ielts test. I only have two choices although I need not worry about that whether I can study in this university. One choice is that I could apply for ten weeks English courses in an other language organization and the other one is that I must stay here by having next extra twenty weeks courses.

  I am depressed for several days even though have to prepare the documentary material for the application. I always beleive that anybody could acquire anything if they paid enough.However it is reverse in my class in which many students tried their best to study but receive little achievement whereas someones catered to the requirement of UNSW by their fortune. It is no doubt that no matter what should happen, I will spend all of my spirit on my English ability and finally conquer this barrier.

  Last monday Athnoy, Kurt and I helped Filix to remove his home from a local community to Kinsford where is not far from our school and then Filix paid the dinner bill for us that night. Athony introduced a korean restanrant to us of course especially to Filix. We were sitting on the bank of the river and drunk the korean wine. It is fantastic!

  For the fascinating career and value both of which are undoubtedly conducive to develop my skill of survival in current society and extend my horizon,I must study hard!