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A place for Writing 12 students to read each other's writing, to critique, to suggest, to improve.
About Me
- Brad
- Former adult teacher who loves island beaches. Happy homebody and family man; once devoted dog owner, now without Tashi, my Tibetan Terrier. I prefer the absurdity of the imagination to the absurdity of imagining nothing.
4 comments:
Recipe for Tteokbokyi (Korean spicy rice cake):
*Store bought rice cake.—200 grams or 1 box.
*Onion—¼.
*Carrot—30 grams.
*Shiitake mushroom—2.
*Green pepper & red pepper—1 each.
*Vegetable oil & sesame oil—a little bit.
[Seasoning.]
*Chipotle paste & jalapeno pepper—1 spoon, or as to your preference.
*Seasoned rice wine & sugar—½ spoons.
*Chicken stock—3 spoons.
*Sesame seed, black pepper, & sesame seed oil—a little bit.
1.Put chicken stock into a wok with 200 grams of rice cake –if the rice cake is hard, take it out of the fridge before cooking, until it’s soft.
2.Chop ingredients beforehand and set it on high with vegetable oil.
3.When the chicken stock is reduced, and when the rice cake is smooth, turn it down to medium or medium high, put chipotle paste and jalapeno pepper to the wok and stir them until it’s well distributed.
4.Put chopped ingredients and seasoned rice wine and sugar to the wok, as to your preference.
5.When it’s done, turn it down to low, and put the sesame oil, black pepper to the wok.
6.Place them in a plate, sprinkle some sesame seeds, and enjoy Tteokbokyi!
Studying laws and having fun with them
Studying laws can be stressful and difficult to some students, but watching Law TV series is a different thing. For those of you who are struggling in thinking about the cases and terminology of Laws, I suggest you to watch two TV series: one is called Boston Legal; the other is called The Good Wife.
Both are kind of fun for watching. Not only that, I found it also helps your listening improvement and debating skills. More than these, the cases in the series are most contemporary. You will watch cases about high school policy, credit card fraud, nuclear pollution, race discrimination, and even murder cases. The closings in the trials are very inspiring and enlightening. I bet you will borrow some ideas and use them in your persuasive essay, and that will impress your teachers. This TV watching is like getting 3 birds with one stone, so why not try it?
Besides the interesting cases, there are also distinct characters. For example, Boston Legal (5 seasons, all finished) is the story of a Law firm, in which there are some excellent lawyers such as Danny Crane and Allen Shore—two best friends with complementary traits. Danny Crane, the older guy, is a radical republican, who is famous for never losing a case, also is notorious as a randy man; Allen Shore, on the opposite, is a cynical middle age man, who is often scornful of power, but famous for winning knotty cases, especially notorious for his long-winded closing speeches which often emotionally bully jury’s mind at last moment. It is interesting to find that every invincible lawyer has his or her own emotional and mental weakness. However, they live with their weakness or what so-called weirdness and still make a good lawyer.
If you just think practicing law is all about justice, you are wrong; it can be something else. The Good Wife(ongoing series, now on season 2) will show you the ugly truth of legal business. There are always some office politics in the law firm: senior partners scheming against each other; junior lawyers climbing their career by stepping on others. Not to mention law suits are sometimes not for justice but for winning, which means money. And you will see some back-door deals within politicians. But don’t get upset by seeing those ugly dirty business, because you will meet a very good character in this story—the good wife Alicia. She was a full time mom before her husband( a state attorney who is running an election) was arrested for his sex and corruption scandal. She goes back to her lawyer’s job after her husband was put in jail. I see Alicia as a tough-wounded woman. she has both snail’s and fighter’s characters. Working at the bottom of her career ladder, she bears the cynical comments with her deliberation and perseverance; dealing with touch cases, she fights for them with her passions and rational mind.
I can’t tell you more about those series. Otherwise, it will ruin your pleasure of watching. It is up to you to watch them either from TV channel or from Internet. It will be quite entertaining--I give you my words.
529 words
Film Review
What would you do if you were forced to face-up to the very real possibility of your own imminent mortality? Who would you think about? What regrets would flash across your worried mind? The 2010 film “127 hours” gives the true life account of Aron Ralston's struggle to stay alive over a 5 day period in mind numbing isolation and having to deal with his slowly deteriorating body. Eventually he has no choice but to choose his own existence. The film is based on Ralston's autobiography “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” and paints a perfect picture of the human spirit and what it’s capable of. The will to survive and there is a huge underlying sociological lesson to be learned also. The movie was filmed at the beautiful Canyonlands National Park in Utah and has many picturesque scenes of desert canyons and amazing rock formations. I loved this movie and If you like the outdoors you’ll like this film too, but this recommendation comes with a warning; if you are squeamish you might have to close your eyes or leave the room for about ten minutes at one point during the film as there is a very graphic scene that might be too much for some people. Other than that, this film was nominated for an academy award in 6 categories: Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Film Editing, Best Music (Original Score), Best Music (Original Song) Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) and Best Picture. Need I say more? – 251 words
Marco
A Scam Phone Call
A muggy July afternoon of five years ago in Taipei, a sharp phone ring startled me when I was immersing myself in design work in the cool air-conditioned room alone. Unbelievably, the police officer connected with a law-abiding citizen like me. I even had no car accident record. "What for?" I suspected. I'd heard millions of frauds pretending to be police officers or bank clerks then; so, certainly, I assumed that it was just a scam at first. But later, I became kind of confused.
"A gang of frauds was caught last month. Have you heard the news?" he asked.
"Yeah," I replied.
Reading newspapers and watching TV news is as vital as the meals for me. I was quite confident that I didn't miss any one.
"We find your name on their dummy accounts," he explained seriously, "so, you must come over for investigation."
Suddenly, I felt like to be struck by lightning, and then the thunder crashed above my head. I remembered Peggy, one of my friends, received a summons because her yahoo account was stolen by frauds, and the victim accused the account user--her. Just then, anxiousness and anger burst inside me, "Damn! Why does it happen to me? How did those gangsters steal my personal information? Did a certain greedy guy in the custom service of a supermarket or some other stores or the bank sell it? Although I'm innocent, it's setting me into trouble. What has this world become?" Gazed at the blazing sunshine outside, I felt chilly.
I indignantly complained about the current social issues to the police officer. He agreed and said that the police had been working hard on criminal cases. My long rant seemed to make the police officer finally lose his patience.
"Hey lady, I believe you, but we're going to lock your bank account due to the process," he emphasized.
"Bank account?" A thread of suspicion like a bullet shot through my head. "Why I didn't get an official written document first, and why they informed me only by phone?" I wondered.
"And please make an appointment with the procurator." he continued. He gave me a name and the phone number.
At the moment, the doorbell rang. I timely made an excuse and promised I would call to the National Police Agency to confirm. Of course, I did not reveal any my account information to him. I called 165 (the Anti Scam toll-free number) instead of the phone number the guy offered me. Finally I got to know that many victims had reported similar cases.
Fortunately I lost nothing. Afterward I cut most of my VIP/credit cards and remained only the most reliable and necessary ones. I won't easily fill in a membership form anymore.
Later, I talked about my experience to all my friends, also heard different stories from each of them. Some received an overdue payment reminder SMS from "credit card centre"; some were informed that they made a "wrong on-line payment" for the website purchase; some were threatened for their children's ransom by "kidnappers". Various scams have been improved by the frauds day by day. It's not just only "Congratulation! You're the winner!" that kind of trick anymore. Besides, a student, a mother, a seniors, even a businessman, a doctor, a professor, anyone could be trapped!
Criminals nowadays might weave a web of intrigue according to humanity, such as anxiousness, fear or sympathy. Keeping calm and a clear mind is the best help to reduce any possible harm as well as to prevent troubles in such jungle.
--593 words
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