You welcome

One of my funnies stories with the English language happened on my first visit to UK.
I had lot of native speaker around me, and every time I said thank you they said “you welcome” The fist month I thought that they were very friendly and kind I really enjoyed been welcoming all the time.
The second month they kept saying “you welcome” to me all the time, and I started to wonder why they were still welcoming me; I had been there for a month. I thought that it was a cultural difference.
The third month arrived and one day when one of my friend bought me a coke and when I thanked him he said “you welcome” I looked at him very crossed and said:
- “ Well, I do not understand you, you treat me like a real friend but after three months here you still welcome me nearly everyday as I have just arrived and it makes me feel very bad because reminds me that I am still a foreigner for you, not a real friend!”
I am sure that you can imagine my poor friend’s face.

Cookie exchange

Last year in november I got an email from a friend of mine with an invitation for a cookie exchange party at her place.
She explained that everybody should bring one kind of cookie and to make sure there wouldn’t be any of them twice she sent a list where you could enrol your name and the sort of cookie you would bring. To make it a little bit more attractive she decided to make a brunch – cocktail party where we share the cookies.
I thaught it would be an extremely smart idea to make cocosmacarones because the dough is so easy and I hurried up to put my name on the list before someone else had the great idea.
In the invitation was written, that everybody should bring fifteen pieces per person.

I prepared to start to bake, it was Saturday and at that point I have to explain that the buisness hours in Switzerland are a little bit different than in the US. On Saturdays the stores are open till five pm and on Sunday closed. I read the email again and thaught that 15 pieces seemed to me a little bit frugal and determined to make 30 because I felt so generous:-)
When I looked into the ovenwindow I decided to call a friend who also would come to that party. While we were talking she moaned about her cookies she made (translated pig’s ears) and that she hadn’t enough place for all these cookies in her kitchen. I laughed about her and asked how big those pig’s ears were and she answered: “Why big the amount is the problem!“ Even then I couldn’t understand what the problem was, so she told me 15 pieses for EVERY member of the group and there were 15 persons on the list. We couldn’t talk after she told me that because we were both laughing so much. I totally misunderstood the email and only made 30 pieces and only because I felt generous - that would make two per person!

So I looked on my watch and it was 4:40 and I had only twenty minutes to got in the next supermarket. I arrived two minutes before the store closes and they were so kind to let me in.
The whole evening I was baking and cursing my soooo extremely “smart“ idea to make cocosmacarones. The dough is easy but to bring them in form you need two little spoons and that takes a lot of time. I asked my husband to help me but he seemed to be totally unable to make proper macaronesballs so I made them by myself.
The next morning at the cookie exchange party my friend told everybody about my generous geste to bring THIRTY cookies to the party and again everybody was laughing about me. Since then I have avoided to bake or even to eat those freaking cocosmacarones!

Give my hair back!

This story is about one of my friends' story. Her name is JiKyung. When we were in highschool, our teachers didn't allow us to have long hair. So, we had to have short hair. Because of it, some of my friends got their hair permed. One day, a teacher who controlled our hair and costumes (uniforms) told us she would check our hair the following week. so we had to make our hair straight but we were students so we didn't have enough money to go to hair salon. Fortunately, in front of my school, there was a shop which sold some stuff for hair. We went there and bought chemical to make our hair straight.
We escaped from physical class and went to the place where our school orchestra practiced because the members of orchestra didn't practice until class was over. One of my classmates was a leader of orchestra so she had a key of that room. We went there and my friend, JiKyung, wanted to do it first. So at first my friend, HM, put the first step chemical on JK's hair. We had to wait 30 minutes but our teacher found us so we had to leave JK there alone.
Unfortunately, that class was too boring that we fell asleep instead of taking care of JK's hair. Worst of all, we were afraid that a music teacher came to the room where Jk was so we locked the door outside. She couldn't come out of that room without us. Also, we got a deep sleep so we didn't answer the phone calls from JK. One hour later, we got up and went to food court and we felt something was missing.
OMG!! We forgot JK! We ran to the place and we found that JK was irritated. We washed her hair, put second chemical on her hair and then we washed her hair again.

TADA! Because of chemical and us, JK's hair started pulling off. She lost a lot of hair which were near her forehead. She went to class and she didn't talk with us for 1 week. We said sorry and sorry a lot of times but we couldn't give her hair back. Whenever we talked about JK's story, we laughed and felt sorry to her. Sorry JK!!

one funny thing in my days

It is not that funny story, actually, it is a bit disgusting and dirty story, but, now nothing funny goes in my life and I want to point out this story for the suite i live in now.
In my suite's bathroom, there is one urinal, which is useless since my suite is only for 10 lovely girls! In addition, the urinal is not connected with the pipe, so if someone uses it, I mean, PEE on it, the liquid thing will go directly on the floor. Of course, there is no drain on the floor. There is no point to have that macho thing in our bathroom.
One day, we had a party in our suite. It was a farewell party for a girl who lived just next to my room. We cooked some dishes of the contries we are from and prepared some drinks(or alcohol). It was a nice party and everyone enjoyed it. The party went on until 3 in the morning. After the party, we found out that some jerk peed on the urinal and his pee overflowed on the floor! The bathroom was such a mess and stunk! We tried to detect who the CRIMINAL was, but we couldn't. So I and my suite mates had to clean the mess up. Usually, the cleaning guys in my dorm mop the floor during week days. Unfortunately, it was Friday night. We would have used the urine-smelly bathroom during the weekend if we hadn't clean it. I hoped that would be the last time I wiped out man's pee with tissue.
2 days ago, there was a small beer party in my suite. One of the girls who live here brought her friends (I think they were already drunk before they came in) and played beer pong. I was in my room annoyed by the noisy drunks. And after they left, I got a facebook message from another girl in my suite. "Our urinal got attacked, gain!!!" When I headed up to the bathroom, the yellowish liquid thing was already releasing its disgusting stink. Why can't they just use the toilets which is working so well?! The only lucky thing out of that disaster was that it was Monday, so the cleaning guys would come the next morning and clean the mess. Now, our bathroom get the normal scent back, but we are being scared by the next upcoming attack.

INTERNET AND THE THINGS IT TOOK AWAY

It is an undeniable truth that the internet has made our lives easier and more comfortable. When our intention is finding some specific and little information, we no longer have to go to the libraries and read big books. Sitting on our chairs, googleing the thing we need to find and getting it is as easy as pie. Connecting with our friends is possible without getting out of our home, we do not have to go see Sistine Chapel to see it and its beatiful ceiling, because with one click it is going to appear on our computers’ screen. No effort, no stress, no spending money. What can we want more as a benefit from the internet? From this perspective it seems so innocent, yet there are some buts.

When we basically observe the current generation, we can easily notice the differences between them and us. Maybe they have more information than we had at their ages but they definitely don’t have the emotions that we have had. We were hanging around together, taking care of eachother instead of asking just “what’s up” by sending an e-mail eachother and we were sharing our bread instead of our pictures.

I cannot say that the internet kills our culture but it goes without saying that it damages.

Internet

Internet is killing the mainstreem media like newspaper, tv or radio stations, which are core of our culture. As I am a person who major in broadcasting, Internet can be also helpful for our culture. I mean our media which I mentioned in the first sentence. People all over the world use internet and because of it, we are one small world. We can see the sitcom "Friends" in Korea also we can watch Korean soft operas in th USA too. Also, these days newspaper is published on the internet and broadcasting stations make webisodes. These examples show that internet can be helpful for spreading our culture instead of killing our culture.

INTERNET AND SOCIAL NETWORK: A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD

Internet and social networks have changed our lives and relationships between people.
Obviously, internet has gone a long way towards new technologies in our current society. We can do whatever we want on line from our home, we can search and find everything we want on internet. But at the same time it causes a ripple effect which can´t be easily controlled.
The fact that everything can be done on internet causes that face-to-face contact between people decreases.
Moreover, the present tendency to post private information on social networks can be risky because everybody can access that information, and it can be counterproductive. Not everybody is aware that once they post opinions, information or pictures on internet, they can´t control them any more, and they don´t know how or who uses it.
Internet is very flexible, people can do whatever they want on the Net, but at least they should be aware that it can be a double edged sword.

INTERNET

Nowadays people are worried about:
How to control what is posted in Internet??
How to control what is downloaded from Internet??
How to control the quality of what is posted in Internet??
Well in my opinion this is a wrong approach to the topic, we should not pretend to “control” it. What is the point on controlling?? Wouldn’t it be much better to enjoy it and use it as a free platform??
The best feature of Internet is its freedom. Why will we want to control them?
Stop controlling and star enjoying the diversity and let it to enrich you with its variety.

Opinion to the statement of Andrew Keen that the internet is killing our culture by Sarah Bieri

To speak about the statement of Andrew Keen that the internet is killing our culture, it is important for me to think about how people use the internet. The use of the internet can be devided in three main categories: research, entertainment and connection.
I decided to think about every category separately.
In the entertainment category the internet changed not the entertainment itself because you can listen to music, view movies or play videogames on the computer without the internet. The change is that you can download games, music, et cetera or play, listen online. So the “big“ change is that there is no need to go to a shop to buy a movie as a dvd, something physical but push some keys and download the desired object. So the internet offers easier access without any buisness hours. I am sure, that there will be a solution for the problem of illegal downloads in the future. The author Andrew Keen regrets, that the download-society destroys small independence record and book stores. I don’t think that the internet is the first big enemy for those small stores. When the first megabook-stores opened ten or fifteen years ago everybody said the same. This process of the big fish is eating the small ones exists since the begin of the industrialization.
The category connection is the one where new opportunities were given by the invention of the internet. People are able to write and read almost at the same time. There are many different possibilities to connect with others via internet. Existent connectionforms like the phone are now integrated in the internet. Facebook, personal homepages or blogs are only a few instruments to publish personal things in the internet. It seems that the internet generated the possibility to connect better with the outside world, make more friends and be always informed about everything others are doing. The problem is and will be the time. In my opinion it isn’t possible to share your time with fivehundert “friends“ and know everything about them. Either one decides to share ones time only with those who are really important for oneself or to have hunderts of superficial friendships and be more “lonely“ with the internet than before.
The third category research includes every information you could find in the internet including news. There are more or less profound informations in the internet. So one has to measure if the information is worthful or not. If someone want to go deeper into the material there are libraries, museums, universities and so on where one can find more information.
The problem might be that those who grow up with the internet and cannot remember times without it have problems to find information outside the internet.
So there will be a gap between well educated people who are able to research information they need outside the internet and those who are not prepared for that in school.
Another problem is and will be that demand determines supply. Big Newspapers like the new york times have huge problem with the demand. Mostly all big newspapers publish in the internet for free so fewer people buy the news in paper. Maybe in the future there won’t be any newspapers left because nobody pays for the work. Or the salary is soo bad that only undereducated journalist do the work. User-generated information are nowadays common and will probably increase in the future.
As a kind of solution for me the internet is an instrument and everybody decides for himself how to use it. Maybe it would be a good idea to teach the next generation the options they have with or without the internet.

Red and Blue

“Homeless people choose to be homeless” vs “If there is a child who cannot read, it is my responsibility to help him even if he is not my child”. Based on these quotes which politician would win an election? If your answer is “of course the second one” you don’t live in the USA.

There are two important colors in America and surprisingly they are not white and black. They are red and blue. Red refers to Republicans (Conservatives) and blue refers to Liberal Democrats. The first quote above belongs to a previous president of the USA. (Ronald Regan) He was a republican. The second quote belongs to the current president Barack Obama who is a democrat. It goes without saying that everyone can clearly understand their philosophies and visions, which are really different.

Basically, republicans want the rich to be reacher by claiming lower taxes to the producers etc., then they expect the rich to help poor. Republicans are against welfare, legal abortion, gay marriage. They strongly support policies on immigration and they are also the strict supporter of the NRA.

On the other hand, democrats believe in the government’s power. They want the government to help the poor and believe that if someone earns more money, they should pay more in taxes. They don’t ignore immigrants’ rights and they are not against gays and abortion.

Individualism, self reliance, equality of opportunities and being competitive in life are similar values of these two sides.

For me, democrats’ opinions are more reasonable but as I mentioned in the first paragraph as an outsider it is quite difficult for me to understand America and its people.

Maybe this aint gonna be further than a cliche` but I’ve got to say that America is totally a different world.

Finding similarities btw Obama & Winthrop

Taking a look at the governor of Massachsetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop and the current President of the United States, we can find they have similarities to each other. Seemingly, it might be unlikely to find something in common between them. However, both of them are great orators, and also some resemblances can be found in their political principles.
John Winthrop, who led a fleet of eleven vessels filled with Calvinists to New England, lived up to the lofty principle of his religion, Calvinism. The main idea of “A Model of Christian Charity”, the blueprint of his political ambition was that: love each other. He emphasized what he wanted to express by saying “We must uphold a familiar community together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality.” He wanted his colony to overcome the new conditions of living by helping the poor neighbors. That means he thought that the wealthy have responsibility to support the community and share what they have so that the community is able to work as the same body.
similarly, Obama has this point of view in the policies he has been raising. He favors progressive tax income which charges more tax to the wealthy than the poor in order to support the entire society. Also, he defends the New Deal policy by Franklin D. Roosevelt which was aimed for the well-being of the community by providing jobs for the unemployed by spending the public funds. Most of all, Obama succeeded in reforming the social insurance program, Medicare which was unreasonable and unfair especially to the low-income citizens. Of course, the resemblance between the two leaders can be easily found when we think about the fact that Obama is from the Democratic Party.
when it comes to the war, we can also infer the common opinion of Winthrop and Obama from their works. Winthrop might be described as a lenient leader when he dealt with the sinners and his enemies because he tried to exercise his belief, ‘Love your enemy’. Obama, as well is trying to recover the rigid relations with the Muslim world and prohibit developing nuclear weapons for the world peace. And he puts his efforts to reduce spending the money for producing weapons for combats. Although it is hard to say that Obama is spending all his energy on practicing the principle, ‘Love your enemy”, we can still recognize the clear difference about the foreign policy between him and George W. Bush.

Two Brothers in Different Centuries (Barrack & John)

John Winthrop (lived in 1600s) and Barrack Obama (the current president of the USA) exactly know how to persuade people and how to gain people’s trust. They know that emotions and religious issues are very important subjects to affect people. Both of their speeches and philosophy contain empathy. Instead of ruining their opponents, they choose to be nice and lenient as much as they can be. Individualism, hard working and considering people around them or a part of their community as a part of their brothers or sisters is their another similar feature.

Winthrop -- Obama

Winthrop and Obama have a lot to offer to the people of their times.

Both of them have a view on their minds of the society that they want.

Both of them have the power to communicate their ideas to the rest of the people.

And both of them are leaders so people follow them.

The main different between them is that Winthrop wanted to change the society in the 17th century and Obama wants to do it in the 21st century.

Obama and John Winthrop

I found 2 similarities and 1 difference between Obama and John Winthrop. One is that both of them emphasized a sense of community. As John said on the boat, Obama also said "I am my brother's keeper, I'm my sister's keeper." He mentioned that we are the one, we are in the same family(community) and we are responsible for others even though they are not homeless. The other is that they insisted that our community have to be a city on a hill. The USA put their value on Equality of Opportunities. Obama has an African name and he is black and skinny but he is the president of the United States of America. He said that his story can be possible in only America because The USA is the city on a hill.

Obama said that we had to remove our enemies like spin masters and negative ad peddlers. On the other hand, John winthrop said that we can be a model city. Our enemies critisize us and because of it, we can be close to a city on a hill.

Other speekers are always busy to blame the other state. BUT Obama didn't blame the Red state and the red state and the blue state can make the REAL USA together. That's why I love OBAMA !!

I guess he wanted to say that human's desire is very strong.Basically, most people can distinguish between what they should do and shouldn't. However, even though people know that, people can't stop following their desire. People don't do that on purpose. Actually, Saint Augustine said "fail to." It means that the people do that kind of compulsively.
For example, when a person drinks and he is supposed to wake up early next day, someone else says, "Let's go to the next bar!" The person knows what he should do, yet, he probably goes to the next bar. I can say that 60 percent of people do this because of people's strong desire.
I have a lot of experiences which are similar to what Saint Augustine said, for instance, when my friends invite me to go to drinking, I always accept it. Some good invitation, especially going drinking, drive me crazy.
As a result, it's easy to consider what I should do, I think. However, judging and doing what we should do are totally different from just considering.