Taiwan Culture

This is my reflection on the bizzarre food video in Taiwan Culture class.  The bizarre food video was hosted by an American man who had never tasted taiwanese food before. The first stop he makes is at the night market to taste the stinky tofu. At first he is hesitant as the food smells 'stinky'. However after he eats it he realizes that it is actually very tasty and he says that he thinks every tofu tastes good. However later he goes to a shop called tofu delights which specializes in cooking dishes that are made from stinky tofu. He orders the two favorites, tofu with one thousand year old eggs and the tofu burger. He first tries the burger, and he realizes that as soon as he takes a bite,  the smell fills his entire nose and mouth. However still feeling adventurous, he eats the one thousand year old eggs. After that he almost pukes in the shop as he thought that the egg and the spinach would blend the taste of the tofu. On the contrary, the eggs and spinach enhanced the taste and made it feel even worse then it actually was. His final stop in his food journey was at a shop that made every thing out of tea leaves. He ate rice and many other dishes that were made out of tea. In the end, he drank a cup of soup to top it off.

Champions League

As the UEFA champions league draws closer, I take a look at the teams and their chances. The ties are Arsenal vs Villareal, Manchester United vs Fc Porto, Liverpool vs Chelsea and Bayern Munich vs Barcelona. First lets look at Arsenal's chances of getting through to the semi-finals. Villareal are a solid team, with ex Arsenal midefielder, Robert Pires and their captain Marcos Senna and Joan Capedelva are both Spanish internationals. Arsenal have been recently in good form although many of their first team members are injured. They will need Samir Nasri Arshavin and Denilson to play at their best if they want to win the game.

Next we look at the united against Porto game. If united does not make any slip ups and play to their usual standard this will be an easy game, with Ronaldo, Rooney and Berbatov. With Ronaldo's speed and diving, Rooney's finishing and fouling players and getting away with it, it should be an easy game for United to win, though I don't expect them to play fairly.

Next we look at the two england teams playing. Well so far liverpool have been doing pretty well thrashing United's butt and then winning Aston Villa. If Torres and Gerard play with their teamwork, the chelsea defence will have some problems. However, Frank Lampard would orchastrate the midfield playing passes to the wings and still scoring. However their captain terry who is pro at missing open goals will be the piece in Chelsea which may cause them to fail. Let's hope he gets injured.

Now the final game of the round. In what I think will be the only good game, where players wont be falling down like Ronaldos or missing open goals like some England Captain, then we can all safely watch the game without feeling like we want to take a picture of them and burn it. I expect that Barcelona's strike force with Eto, Henry and Messi would give many problems to the the Bayern defence. Hopefully, Phillip Lahm will not let people run past him and score easy goals thus making himself seem like a short clown. The bayern attack will be led by Miroslav Klose who is good at scoring goals. However he scores when Bayern dont need to score, but when they need he is MIA( Missing In Action).

So hopefully the champions league will be fun and maybe some players(Ronaldo and Rooney) will get injured.

Blood Red Horse

The blood red horse book is about life in england for a knight during the crusade. The book showed the 'glamour' of warfare and what were the hardships of living during that time period. The protagonist of the story is William Thomas who is going on his first crusade as a knight. He has a blood red horse called Hossana who is about the size of a courser, but it can easily out maneuver a bigger horse. At first, when he leaves, he thinks that the crusades is going to be enjoyable and easy. However, along the way he learns all of the hardships in war and loses some of his loved ones.  

The book shows that lords were respected in the land their owned as they were the most powerful in their kingdom as they controlled everything. It took about 2 generations of families, to build a castle and usually, the lord who started the building of a castle would not live to see it. Most of the time, it was his grandson who inherited the castle. Most of the time, the first born son was the one who inherited everything that his father owned. This means that the second born son got almost nothing and had to find an alternative way to get an income. Most of the time this was from the church.  In the story William was supposed to find a way to get income, but due to the crusade, he  was allowed to become a knight and fight.

England 4 Slovakia 0

In the build up to Saturday's friendly with Slovakia all the talk had been about David Beckham setting a new record number of caps for an England outfield player, so much so that manager Fabio Capello chastised the media for not asking a single question about today's opponents in his pre-match match press conference.

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Wayne Rooney fires in his second goal

And the only nod to history in Capello's starting eleven was the retro new Umbro kit the squad paraded for the first time as the anthems blared at Wembley. Bobby Moore, the man Beckham would surpass when he eventually took to the pitch for his 109th cap, would not have looked out of place in it.

Capello instead chose to look to the future as he rewarded 21-year-old Tottenham Hotspur winger Aaron Lennon for his improved form at White Hart Lane with a starting place on the right of England's midfield. The youngster's emergence at the 2006 World Cup was one of the reasons that Beckham was dropped by former England boss Steve McClaren but Lennon never met expectations and his demise lead to Beckham's recall.

But now the pacy winger is back in form, back in the England team and he was quickly back into the action here at Wembley as he provided an early cross that was cut out at the near post as Emile Heskey lurked.

There have been question marks about Lennon's decision making and delivery of the final ball and his next attempted cross was deflected into the path of Frank Lampard, whose shot forced a good save from Slovakia goalkeeper Stefan Senecky, rather than delivered to his colleague by design.

Still, Capello had turned to Lennon to provide his team with blistering pace in the absence of Arsenal's Theo Walcott and his speed helped him beat the offside trap on 10 minutes. Although he made the wrong decision to pull the ball back to the edge of the box rather than shoot his immediate impact was a pre-cursor to a lively half.

When England's opening goal did arrive it came down the opposite flank as the unlikely duo of Wayne Rooney and Steve Gerrard combined to provide Emile Heskey with a tap in after only seven minutes. Rooney later scored twice while Lampard added one.

Man beheads sister

A man on a rampage fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then headed toward his 9-year-old sister with a knife in his hand before officers shot him amid what the police chief described as 'a killing field'. There was no clear motive for the events that unfolded on Saturday in a tiny Boston suburb that also is home to Governor Deval Patrick. But there was no doubt at the carnage wrought by 23-year-old Kerby Revelus against his three sisters in the two-family home they shared with their parents and grandmother. It is said that the murders came 24 hours after Revelus had gotten into a fistfight with a neighbor.  It seems that Revelus's target was the older sister, aged 17. However the second youngest sister, aged 9 called police dispatcher and within minutes an officer had arrived. Enraged, Revelus beheads the youngest sister, aged 5 in front of the officer and goes for his sister who had called the police. The police officer however shoots him and kills him. He died clutching the knife to his heart. This means that even to the end, he was a bad person and his intentions were to kill all his family members. Revelus has gone to jail before a year ago, but no details were released by the news papers. He also had gotten trouble before for punching one of the women in his house.

Britain was so alarmed by UFO sightings 20 years ago that they breifed ministers

These shocking truths were released on Monday by the National Archives as part of seven files that were recorded from 1989 to 1993. "Such stories are not normally drawn to the attention of ministers," an official noted in a memo included in the file. "On this occasion, however, the MoD has been provided with six photographic negatives of an alleged UFO by the Scottish Daily Record and has been asked for comments almost certainly for inclusion in a forthcoming story." Among the other files released were details of an anonymous female dog walker who said she met an alien who claimed extraterrestrial life was behind crop circles. The woman, who telephoned the Royal Air Force to relay her experience, said the incident happened on November 20, 1989, while she was walking her dog on a sports field. She said she was approached by a man who spoke with a "Scandanavian-type accent" dressed in a brown garment that resembled a flying suit who told her that the purpose of the alien visit was friendly. Britain's ministry of defence was handed negatives of photographs - showing a large diamond-shaped object hanging in mid-air for around 10 minutes before ascending upwards at high speed - taken on August 4, 1990, by two members of the public.

Reading Response Journal

What did the Romans contribute to society?

After the fall of the Roman empire, it took a thousand years for Europe to start flourishing again. F0r 1000 years, there were almost no art and literature in Europe and Europe entered what was called the Middle Ages, or Dark Ages. The Roman empire provided a form of stability and protection for Europe. This meant that during the Roman empire, Europe understood what was the position of everyone and had stability. Everyone understood what their job was and what was expected of them. They knew that they had to give a certain amount of their crops to the Romans and that they had a set of laws that they had to follow or be punished. The Romans also provided protection for Europe. The romans also ensured that none of the barbaric tribes attacked any of the towns and cities that were under their control. The barbaric tribes knew that they would be massacred if they dared attack the cities. After the fall of the roman empire all of this changed. Towns and cities were no longer protected by the soldiers and were continuously pillaged by rogue knights and mercenaries. Europe also did not have any of form of stability and it was a free for all. It was impossible to travel through trading routes without being attacked by bandits. People could kill each other for no reason and get away with it. It took 400 years for Europe to finally get a form of stability back and stop people from being continuously robbed.

Nitrogen Passport Activity

Today we did a Nitrogen Passport Activity in science class. We had to go around to different stations and then start to try and see what cycle we would take. Well not everyone went in the same order because everyone started at different stations and rolled the dice with different numbers. This means that each person follows a different cycle and a different path. The station I started at was animals waste. When looking at the results of this experiment I can tell that cycles repeat itself. The cycle I went through repeated itself halfway, which shows that I took the same path again. This explains why cycles are called cycles. Like the wheels on a bicycle, a cycle always repeats itself as long as there is no interference from other sources.  I noticed however that the stations surface water and ocean were usually crowded. This means that most of the nitrogen passes through either the ocean or the surface water or both. This could  be due to the fact that rain usually has nitrogen particles trapped inside of it.  The nitrogen particles were most of the time transported by water or liquids. Since the ocean and surface water are the biggest sources of water and liquid around, I assume that most of the nitrogen ends up there. I think that the point of the activity was to understand the different ways nitrogen can be transported from one place to another. The nitrogen can be transported by many ways but mainly through water as that is the most abundant source on the planet with 70% of the planet being covered by water. Water also has its own cycle which means that the nitrogen can be transported over long distances in rain clouds.