final project website:
https://www.ijs-global.com/class09/SophieGUAN/finalproject/index11.html
Final Project–Hong Kong charity organizations under the financial crisis
April 9, 2009 at 2:39 pm (Uncategorized)
Soundslide: Hong Kong Flower Show 2009 at Victoria Park
April 3, 2009 at 5:12 pm (Uncategorized)
Link: http://www.ijs-global.com/class09/SophieGUAN/project
by Sophie & Ami
Backgrounder of Prague Spring
March 6, 2009 at 4:01 pm (Uncategorized)
A progressive faction of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, in the early months of 1968, set about liberalizing Czechoslovak life, democratizing the government and loosening the country’s association with Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This movement was known as the Prague Spring which the Czech people can never forget.
The movement began with Alexander Dubchek’s appoinment as head of the communist party on January 5th 1968 who soon initiated a series of reforms, calling for some freedom in the press, multi-party government, more consumer goods and even a division of Czechoslovakia into two nations.
The reform program won mass support in Czechoslovakia, but the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies felt those actions would undermine the Communist Eastern Bloc of Soviet. The movement went on until August 20th when Warsaw Pact forces occupied the country, leading thousands of death and making Czechoslovakia again became a tightly controlled communist state, which was a tough time for all the citizens as well as the whole country, resulting many Czechoslovakia people went to other countries to avoid this event.
Timeline:
January 5th 1968, Alexander Dubchek, a Slovak with a liberal reputation, was appointed as First Secretary of the communist party, replacing former chief Antonin Novotny.
April 1968, Dubchek ended censorship and instituted liberal economic reforms. Besides, he continued to proclaim loyalty to Moscow.
April 20-21 1968, Warsaw Pact invaded and Prague Spring ended.
June 1968, Warsaw pact maneuvers held in Czechoslovakia.
October 28 1968, large protests occurred in Prague against the Soviet occupation.
April 17 1969, Gustav Husak replaced Dubchek as First Secretary of the communist party.
Sources:http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his135/Events/Czech68.htm#Timeline
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/glossary/g/glpraguespring.htm
Vox pop– Views from the street about transpotation
February 13, 2009 at 5:07 pm (Uncategorized)
By Ami Han, Julia Zhu and Sophie Guan
Hong Kong – Feb.13 — IJS-Global — Hong Kong people is usually obsessed by its heavy traffic. Here are some reactions from people interviewed about which transportation means they prefer to choose.
Sin Meiyi, 40-year-old custom service assistant
“I usually choose bus for work because it saves a lot of time. Although metro is convenient to some extent, the station is far from my working place and walking up and down, in and out always tires me very much. I have to spare time in waiting, though, I still prefer bus to other means of transportation. ”
Mok Kapo, a nurse working in Hong Kong Baptist Hospital
“I go to work by train every day. I live in Hung Hom, since there are two stops to Kowloon Town Station, the train takes me only ten minutes to reach here, and then I could just spend another ten minutes to the hospital. So it is much faster when compared with bus. On the other hand, I don’t have to be bothered by the heavy traffic jam.”
Yip Yee Ching, 12, middle school student
“I usually take bus to school and to go home because it is the most convenient vehicle for me. Because I go to school at 7am and go home at 3:30pm, which are neither in rush hour, the traffic is good. It costs me nearly half an hour on the way, and the bus stations are both near to my school or home. If I take metro, although I spend just 15 minutes on the metro itself, I need more time to walk from the stations to my school or home.”
Mr. Leung, 35, office clerk worked in Central
“I like metro. It’s so fast and. It takes the least time for me to the office. But when transfer one line to another line, I have to walk for a while and there are so many people forcing their way. So I feel a little inconvenient.”
Nancy Ng, housewife
“I usually drive to pick up children. The traffic is often good because I don’t drive in rush hours. Although it’s often hard to find parking space in Hong Kong, driving is still my first choice. We don’t take metro often, because it is always crowded in the rush hour, and my children are so young that I don’t want them to be crowded.”
Mr. Lee Kwai Tak, 52, security guard
“Metro is always my first choice. My work starts from 7 o’clock. Metro is very fast and punctual. So I can just leave home at 6:30,and won’t be late. Otherwise, bus cost me one hour on the way. And metro is also more environment friendly.”
Old lady, vigorous tour guide
February 11, 2009 at 4:24 pm (overseas reporting trip)
By Sophie Guan
Prague – Jan.11— IJS-Global —Piercing wind spread out the whole town, and few tourists were wandering on the desolate streets. It seemed that low temperature and white snow made Kutna Hora, a small town not far from the capital of Czech Republic, in its tourist off-season.
This small town with a long history, owning the well-known St. Barbara Church, can never be so quiet and deserted like this period. In the warm time, especially in May, it has a totally different scene, attracting millions of tourists over the world all day long.
Jaromiar, the oldest tour guide in Kutna Hora, who is always busy showing the tourists around the ancient town in high season, doesn’t have much work to do at present. Thus, she could make snacks and play with her dog leisurely in her warm house.
This 66-year-old lady has been working as an English-speaking tour guide in the small town for nearly seven years. Her work was guiding the tourists to visit the scenic spots and explaining brief history about these places of interest.
The Czech government usually recruits senior citizens like Jaromira who could speak foreign languages like German, Russian, English and French as tour guides. After a short-time training, these people could work as a tour guide, a ticket seller or an information consultant at scenic spots etc. using an understandable foreign language. Therefore, it is not strange to see that many elderly people are still working in their sixties or seventies in Czech.
These old tour guides, once hired, will be recommended by the government to meet clients’ need. And after their work, they will get paid from the government organs on an hourly basis. Jaromiar gets her pays from the local tourist information center for 150 Koruna (US$ 7.5) an hour as a Czech-speaking tour guide and 200 Koruna (US$ 10) as an English-speaking tour guide. It seemed that she was satisfied with her pays. “Thanks to this salary, my husband and I could have a one-week holiday with my sons and grandchildren every year.” She said.
Jaromira told that there are about 20 people working as a full-time or part-time tour guide in Kutna Hora and four of them are elderly people, among which two old guys speak German and one lady speaks Russian. She also emphasized that only she herself of those tour guides could speak English fluently.
Although she had to refer to dictionary for unfamiliar words sometimes, her English is understandable when communicating with foreigners. Jaromira got the basic knowledge of English in middle school, but she learnt most of it due to a-few-month overseas living experience in 1993.
“In communism society, we can only go to the communist countries around Czech, but at that time, with my friend’s invitation, I could go to England and live with them,” Jaromira said, being proud of her experience of being abroad. “I practiced my English with them and that’s why I can keep speaking.”
However, it is odd to find that many younger generations of this country cannot speak English as well as Jaromira. She attributed this phenomenon to the two big transitions in Czech Republic. “People in Czech did not pay much attention to study English. Instead, they learnt German when the German army took control of Czech, and in 1970s and 1980s they turned to Russian.”
Jaromira hesitated to recall the huge changes of her country that she experienced. It seemed to be a nightmare for her. “I don’t like communism,” she said. “They are too strict. They declared everything to be theirs, even the house which built by the citizens themselves.”
“In communist time, I cannot go abroad because of shut up of the country. However, in capitalism, I can go abroad but I have no money.” Jaromira concluded when asked to compare communism and capitalism.
Nowadays, she doesn’t pay attention to whether communism is better than capitalism or not any more. Instead, she cares more about her future. She said she would continue to guide more people in the upcoming high season.
”I love to stand in front of St. Barbara Church. I smile at the tourists while they are smiling at me,” Jaromira said. “I love my job for it gives me full of energy.”
Fresh graduates care more about the festival itself, little about financial crisis
February 2, 2009 at 10:50 pm (Uncategorized)
By Sophie Guan
Jiangsu — January 31 — IJS-Global — It seems to be a different spring festival to those fresh graduates who just found the first job of their lifetime. During this Chinese New Year of ox, they have to give lai see to their relatives instead of receiving like the past traditional festivals. Faced with the worldwide financial turmoil, the pays they get are not too much, but they didn’t cut down their budget on this spring festival, instead, they give lai see and gifts generously.
“It’s the first Lunar New Year since I got my job, so the biggest difference is that I have to distribute lucky money to my nephew.” Zhang Wei recalled. He graduated from a university in Shanghai last summer and now works in a public institution, the primary work of which is monitoring power quality. Zhang told that in the past when he was still at university, he always received red packets from his elderly relatives, but since this year he would have to take out some part of his salary to the younger generation.
In terms of the current financial crisis, Zhang thought it had little to do with his daily life. “I am very lucky to find a job when the world is suffering the financial turmoil, but it had little effect on me till now and I didn’t cut down the budget of buying because there is only one spring festival to celebrate in a year.” He said.
Besides giving lai see to junior relatives, some fresh graduates spend their salary on treating. Gu Chengguang is such a kind of person. Gu is working as an accountant in a property company in Nantong, a city of Jiangsu province. He said that almost a half of his pays were spent in inviting his relatives and friends to dinner. “Everyone wants to enjoy the happiness of the Lunar New Year, so I don’t care about the financial crisis. It may be thought that I have spent too much on treating, but I should say that only in the spring festival did I do that.” Gu expressed that he didn’t want the financial crisis to disturb the harmony of the traditional festival.
Compared with the two above-mentioned people, Liu Rujie seemed to spend a more significant traditional new year this time. He studied at National University of Singapore since 2004, so every spring festival did he have to stay alone in Singapore, far from his family. After he graduated last July, Liu became a programmer in a local medium-sized company. “The boss approved my leave so it was so exciting that I can go back to my hometown and have a reunion with my family. ” Liu said.
Singapore where Liu is working now is the country that suffered the financial crisis a lot. And Liu told that his job was more or less affected by the current crisis. “But it didn’t keep me from giving red packets to my relatives.” He added. ”In my eyes, the financial turmoil didn’t bring many effects to my hometown, and it’s the first time for me to spend the traditional festival at home since I went abroad. So there is no need to consider the worldwide spread crisis, and I decided to spend most of my salary on gifts to my relatives and friends. The reason why I went back is just to enjoy warmth and festiveness of my family.”
outline of overseas reporting
January 19, 2009 at 4:03 pm (overseas reporting trip)
It is interesting to see that lots of senior citizens in Prague who are thought to retire are still working in many positions such as ticket sellers in places of interest, consultants at information center and tourist guides in scenic spots. And to our surprise, most of them could communicate with foreign tourists in English. Therefore, our group would like to do a report about Prague focusing on this unusual phenomenon. Specifically speaking, we paid more attention to one aspect, i.e. old tourist guides.
To begin with the report, we’d like to tell the interesting phenomenon in Prague as mentioned above.
Secondly, we would focus our subject on the specific aspect of those old tourist guides. Several figures we get from the government agency will be cited to explain how many old guides are employed by the government at present.
Thirdly, to be more specific, we’d like to explain this phenomenon from the perspective of an almost-70-year-old lady who is now a local tourist guide in Kuntna Hora, a small town close to Prague. Besides introducing her basic information, like when she started to do as a guide, where she learned English, whether she got any training about guiding or not, what advantages she has when she is compared with younger guides, and how she felt about her present life, we would also tell the changes of this country in the past one decade in her eyes, especially after the separation between Czech Republic and Slovakia , how the ordinary people like this old lady felt, and whether or not their lives changed a lot after the revolution.
This lady, to some extent, represents the group of senior citizens who are still working. And introducing her in details could on one hand show how the old live in the contemporary times, and on the other hand explain the phenomenon that is not common to find in other countries like China and France.
Avoiding plagiarism and appropriately using downloaded pictures
January 19, 2009 at 2:04 pm (plagiarism)
Plagiarism is thought to be a form of intellectual dishonesty, which means “taking someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own”. Plagiarism is also called “intellectual theft”(1), because the person who plagiarizes others’ words or ideas not only steals what belongs to others but also pretends to be more knowledgable than he really is.
Therefore, plagiarism is considered to be immoral and dishonst, and it is necessary for everyone to avoid plagiarism, which means “every sentence that you write will have to be your very own”. But in some cases when you really want to use the exact words of others, you should not borrown them without acknowledgement, instead, you should “put them in quotation marks”(2). And when you make use of an idea or observation that belongs to others and that is not common knowledge to the public, it is demanding that you credit its source.
In terms of posting downloaded pictures on blogs, it is no secret that adding images on your blog is an effective way to attract more attention to your writing. However, when it comes to finding great photos, the question of copyright infringement has come up. Some people may think that it is right to post the downloaded pictures on their websites as long as they credit sources. Actually, it is not so easy as they think. There are a series of licenses existing about how to use downloaded images, which means you have to comply with different restrictions when you want to post images from other web sites on your blog. Take Flicker images-popular with netizens in stocking of images-for example, pictures under “Attribution License” allows you to modify the images and to use them in both commercial and non-commercial spaces, and “Attribution NonDerivs License” allows you to use photos freely in any context so long as you credit the photographer, while for those pictures under “Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs License” you could only use them in as long as they are not modified and as long as you are not profiting from the context of the pictures. (3)Therefore, it is necessary to know how and where each image can be used before we download it from the website, not just crediting the source.
Hyperlinks:
(1)http://buar.hkbu.edu.hk/uploads/files/avoiding_plagiarism/I_Introduction.pdf
(2)http://buar.hkbu.edu.hk/uploads/files/avoiding_plagiarism/II_How_to_Avoid_Plagiarism.pdf
(3)
http://www.skelliewag.org/a-complete-guide-to-finding-and-using-incredible-flickr-images-162.htm
“I’ll continue drawing until I am too old to move”
January 16, 2009 at 8:34 pm (Uncategorized)
Hong Kong – January 16 – IJS-Global – Han Ao, a 22-year-old girl from Chongqing, an inner city in the west of China, is keen on drawing cartoon characters. “It might be thought to be ridiculous that an adult in his 20s and 30s loves cartoon very much, but I will continue enjoying and drawing them until I am too old to move.”
“It’s just because of interest.” Han said. She started drawing as she was eight years old when other kids were forced by their parents to study all day long. Han told that both of her parents supported her hobby. “Drawing makes me release from the heavy burden of study,” she said drawing is her most favorite thing in her spare time. In the past ten years, Han won tens of prizes ranging from national to provincial, and published hundreds of pictures in various magazines.
Han was also a fan of Van Gogh, a well-known painter from Holland. “Watching his paintings is like to feel his senses.” She explained,”that was beacuse he instilled all of his emotion to the works.”
Although Han favours drawing, she never considers to be an artist in her future career. She is now majoring in journalism and took internship in several media in her college life, such as Guangzhou TV station and Zhejiang TV station. “The journalistic life in the TV stations is so exciting, but actually the printed press is where I wanted to work because I’d like to experience another kind of life.” Han said.
(Han’s hyperlink: ami425.wordpress.com)
Hello world!
January 16, 2009 at 6:48 am (Uncategorized)
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