Do Not Cry, Have A Doughnut Today!

I read   that  some people love donuts,specially @banbi12   and  @emihiro7

At the end of the article, you can find  a vocabulary quiz.  

The Story of Doughnuts

The truth, the hole truth…

In the mid-1990s, I visited Las Vegas for the first time. I was there for an Internet conference, and a friend of mine who had been there many times took it upon himself to show me all the standard tourist sites and make sure I got the complete Las Vegas experience. We walked down the Strip, taking in the obligatory pirate show, erupting volcano, and other spectacles. But there was one sight I had never heard of that was later to become a regular pilgrimage for me: the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts shop in the Excalibur hotel.

    At that time, Krispy Kreme hadn’t expanded to become the phenomenon it is today. The only commercial doughnut shop chain I had ever known was Dunkin’ Donuts. But Krispy Kreme was definitely something special. For one thing, visitors could watch the doughnuts being made; a window ran along the side of the shop where the line formed. I was fascinated by the mechanism that flipped the doughnuts over in the oil when they were half-cooked, and watched in awe as they passed through a curtain of glaze. Although doughnuts are such a simple food, I felt I was watching something magical. Then I tasted one, and was even more impressed. I had never known what a fresh, hot doughnut was like—the difference from what I had experienced before is like that of fresh bread hot from the oven compared to week-old supermarket bread. It was light, soft, perfectly sweet—delicious. I couldn’t understand why Krispy Kreme hadn’t taken over the world yet; of course, it was only to be a matter of time.

When a local newspaper ran an article about the history of doughnuts, it got me wondering how many other things about doughnuts I had been taking for granted all along. I decided to do a bit of research.

From Oily Cakes to Doughnuts

Doughnuts as we know them today originated in the mid-1800s. Their predecessor was the olykoek, a treat Dutch immigrants to the U.S. made by frying the leftover bits of bread dough in hot oil. Exactly how the name “doughnut” came to be used is the subject of some disagreement. According to some sources, the Dutch twisted their dough into knots, hence “dough knots”. Others point out that the olykoeken tended not to cook through in the very middle, so some makers would put nuts in the center (“dough-nuts”) to make them more palatable.

The uncooked centers seem to have been, directly or indirectly, the reason behind the hole. According to several widely diverging accounts, the doughnut hole was the invention of a New England sea captain named Mason Crockett Gregory (or Hansen Gregory or Hanson Gregory, depending on who you ask) around 1847. Gregory’s mother Elizabeth made olykoeken and sent them with her son on his journeys to sea. The least likely but most colorful version of the story, and therefore the one I like best, is that Gregory needed a place to put his olykoek while he steered the boat, so he impaled it on one of the spokes of the steering wheel. Other sources say that Gregory came up with the idea in a dream or claimed to have received it from angels; some say he simply didn’t like the uncooked centers (or the nuts his mother filled them with) and poked them out; still others say he may have encountered a cake with a hole in the middle during his journeys and decided to adapt the idea to the olykoeken. Whatever Gregory’s real reason for adding the hole, it had the beneficial effect of making the doughnuts cook more evenly, and the idea quickly caught on.

Success Rolls On

Nearly thirty years later, in 1872, John Blondell received the first patent for a doughnut cutter. Doughnut technology advanced significantly over the next few decades. By the 1930s, automated doughnut-making machines were producing the treats in huge quantities. And in the 1940s and 1950s, chains like Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts sprang up, taking mass-produced doughnuts to the masses. In Canada, meanwhile, the name most often associated with doughnuts is Tim Horton, a former hockey player who lent his name to a nationwide chain of doughnut shops.

Fond though I am of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, I have become increasingly aware that the doughnut illuminati don’t take them very seriously. I asked my friend Russ, a doughnut connoisseur, where to find the best doughnuts in San Francisco. Without any hesitation, he said, “Oh, Wirth Brothers Pastry Shop on Geary. They’re the best by far; I’ve been going there for years.” If there was something better than Krispy Kreme, I had to experience it for myself. In the interest of science, I set out on a field trip.

Hole Is Where the Heart Is

Wirth Brothers is a small, inconspicuous bakery; their doughnuts are barely even noticeable in the display case among the cakes and pastries. But I went in and ordered a few, assuring the owner that they came with the highest recommendation. She smiled knowingly; apparently she gets that a lot. The current proprietor is neither a Wirth nor a brother, but she’s been making doughnuts by hand for 28 years, following the recipe of the store’s original owner, who opened the business in the 1930s. She said the recipe is no secret, but that the key is the half-hour of hand mixing they do every morning, which gives the doughnuts their unique texture. “Come back at 8:00 in the morning,” she advised me, “to get them when they’re hot.”

I then headed to the local Krispy Kreme, where even in the evening, the “Hot Doughnuts Now” sign was illuminated, signifying the availability of doughnuts fresh off the conveyor belt (as well as free samples for each customer). I carefully compared the Wirth Brothers doughnuts with the Krispy Kreme, trying to maintain a properly objective attitude. The doughnuts from the bakery were significantly larger, and much chewier. When I bit into one, my teeth met some resistance halfway through; I found this “al dente” quality quite pleasing. The Krispy Kremes, however, were uniformly light; it was like biting into sweet, slightly oily air. I repeated the experiment on another pair of doughnuts, just to be scientifically responsible. There was no doubt: Krispy Kreme was merely fantastic, compared to the heavenly perfection of the Wirth Brothers doughnut. To be absolutely sure, though, I will have to repeat this experiment at various times of day and at numerous outlets around the country. I love science. —Joe Kissell

http://itotd.com/articles/314/the-story-of-doughnuts/

Choose the correct meaning of the word:

1 phenomenon - 

a. unusual occurrence 

b. usual occurrence 

2. fascinated

a. bored, uninterested 

b. captivated, enchanted , absorbed

3. predecessor

a. a thing replaced by another thing, as in use

b. a person or thing that succeeds, or follows

4.originated

a. started 

b. finished 

5. hence

a. that's why, for this reason 

b.  for no reason 

6.palatable

a. disagreeable in flavor to be eaten.

b.agreeable in flavor to be eaten

7. impaled

a. pierced with a sharp point 

b. pulled 

8.connoisseur

a.ignorant 

b. an expert 

9.inconspicuous

a. clear

b. Not readily noticeable.

10.objective

a. fair 

b. unfair

Do you love doughnuts?

Hmmmm.. Because of this article, I'm now craving for doughnuts with coffee.

 Do not cry.Eat a donut now. 

With Aja Aja English, you can eat a doughnut while studying English! 

Add me up to your contacts.

Skype ID - imteacherjet 

Google Talk -  ajaajaenglish@gmail.com

Windows Live Messenger -  ajaajaenglish@hotmail.com

Email - ajaajaenglish@gmail.com 

Who Wants Magic In English?

Image via Wikipedia

Everybody loves magic.
Weeks ago, I attended a meeting wherein one magician taught us how to hypnotize our friends.
As soon as I got home, I was too excited to show that trick to my students. They became convinced and surprised but at the end of our class, I revealed to them the secrets behind what I  did.
Because of that, I'd like to share this lesson in reading.
Have you heard of Harry Houdini's magic? Read the following  and get your dictionary to check  for words that you don't understand. Good luck!  



Unlocking the secrets of Houdini's enduring magic
By Laura Allsop (CNN) 

(CNN) -- Though he died nearly a century ago, the legendary illusionist Harry Houdini remains one of the best-known magicians of all time.

His infamous escapes -- from straitjackets while suspended high in the air, and from coffins, locked trunks and outsize milk cans -- made him a household name across the world at the beginning of the 20th century.

"This is a guy that here it is, 85 years after his death, he is still as well known today -- everybody knows who Houdini was," said Jeff Taylor, director of the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan.

Houdini's stunts and tricks relied heavily on "magic apparatus" or stage props, including the "Metamorphosis Trunk," his handcuffs and the"Water Torture Cell," among others.

"They weren't exotic props, for example the metamorphosis trunk is like a packing trunk or a steamer trunk that an immigrant community would have instant identification with," said Brooke Kamin Rapaport, curator of "Houdini: Art and Magic" at the Jewish Museum in New York.

The exhibition, she said, shows many of these props and reveals how the Hungarian-American's incredible stunts were grounded in the everyday life of the common man.

Though Houdini's fans included rich and poor, to the immigrant communities he was not just an entertainer, he was a "superhero" and one of the first major celebrities of the new media age, said Rapaport.

"I think that people in immigrant communities would have looked on Houdini's feats in a very symbolic way; that they weren't just stunts but they were symbols because he symbolized to that community the ability to liberate oneself, that you could escape from oppression or constraints," she added.

Houdini was born Ehric Weiss in Budapest in 1874 and moved to America with his family as a child. He began performing tricks for a five-cent circus aged nine but it wasn't until 1899 that he was discovered by a vaudeville booking agent.

On view at the Jewish Museum are two diaries kept by Houdini, both of which are from private collections and have never been displayed publicly before.

One is from the period just before he became famous, in 1898, and one from 1916, after he had achieved fame for his astonishing escapes.

They include lowering himself into New York's East River in a crate wrapped in chains, from which he escaped and then swam to the surface, escaping from a glass-fronted box filled with water known as the "Water Torture Cell," into which he had been inserted upside down and manacled bridge jumps.

A skilful user of the new media of the time, Houdini made sure that his exploits were captured on camera and later on film. According to Taylor, his public stunts -- which attracted crowds of thousands -- were really a way of drumming up publicity for his shows.

And from 1919, Houdini moved into celluloid proper, producing and acting in silent films that usually featured elaborate escapes from assorted villains.

Also on view at the Jewish Museum are works of contemporary art that show the magician's enduring appeal to artists and contemporary culture.

Artist Jane Hammond presents a painting referencing Houdini's famous trick of pulling a string of needles out of his mouth.

"I think there are a lot of interesting consonances between art and magic, and you know artists want their art to be transformative and to be magical," she said.

Fans curious to find out how exactly Houdini managed these extraordinary feats will have to get their insights elsewhere.

Adhering to a strict "magician's code," the Jewish Museum will not reveal Houdini's secrets or allow visitors to look inside his props.

"Once the secret is revealed, it's not as compelling," said Rapaport.

"The objects don't hold that significance and that drama once we know how they're done," she added.

Despite his incredible physical strength, Houdini was not invincible and died on Halloween in 1926 from a ruptured appendix, thought have been caused by a student testing Houdini's famed ability to withstand any blow to the body.

"I think it came to a point where the audience expected that he would keep upping the ante," said Rapaport. "And he never disappointed, he really continued to do that throughout his career.

"It's always bigger and better with magicians," said Taylor.

In the end, he said, Houdini's greatest feat lay in his enduring popularity.

"Truly, death was the ultimate escape for him; the fact that he is still so well known this many years after his death, you know, there's not a lot of entertainers can say that," he said.

"Houdini: Art and Magic" travels to Los Angeles in the Spring, then San Francisco and finally to Madison, Wisconsin.

The original text can be found here: CNN News - Harry Houdini

Reading Comprehension: Answer the following:

• 1.       Who was one of the best knows magicians of all time and why?
• 2.       To the immigrant communities, his stunts meant something. What did it symbolize?
• 3.       Where and when was Harry Houdini born?
• 4.       Why weren’t the visitors allowed to look at his props in the museum?
• 5.       Explain: "Truly, death was the ultimate escape for him.” 

D 

Live a magical life, 

Teacher Jet 

W         Who wants   two free   sessions of Skype lessons with me?  E-mail your answers to   ajaajaenglish@gmail.com.The fifth e-mail would be the winner of this contest.Hurry up! 

S

Do You Ever Wonder How Does One Cook Up A Storm?

To cook up a storm is an  Australian slang which means to cook an amazing meal. 

Watch this video and learn  how does Kylie Kwong cook up a storm.

 

Read this CNN news and study some vocabulary words. 

(CNN) -- Family, food and faith have guided Kylie Kwong to where she is today. 

The 41-year-old chef has been cooking up a storm with her TV shows and restaurant for over a decade, adding a dash of color and flavor to Australia's cultural life. 

A third generation Chinese who grew up in the suburbs of Sydney in the 1970s, Kwong left High School to work for an advertising agency. She soon realized, however, that making people feel bad in order to make them buy things they didn't want wasn't for her. Making people happy through good food was much more appealing. 

After leaving the advertising industry she worked part-time for a caterer where she saw a way to combine the love of cooking she inherited from her mother with a growing interest in creating her own business. 

She opened her first restaurant "Billy Kwong" 10 years ago and it has since become a fixture on the Sydney restaurant scene. 

"When I opened the goal was very simple. I wanted to fill it every night and serve really fantastic, amazing, fresh Chinese food out of this funny little arty place," she told CNN.

"And I love running a business. It's so challenging. And I love what it brings out of you. You find these hidden strengths you find that you didn't know you had."

Since then Kwong has developed a larger profile through her cooking shows and recipe books.

She also let cameras follow her to southern China and the village where her great grandfather once lived; the first time a member of Kwong's immediate family had been there in 90 years.

It was a world apart from the suburban Australia that Kwong knew. Coming from the only Chinese family in her suburb, Kwong says she always felt different from other children. 

"I certainly felt different when I'd go to school and open the lunch box and there I'd have last night's rice and soy sauce chicken wings and my friend had the Vegemite sandwiches," she told CNN. 

"And that point it was very good to be different because our food was so much more interesting. Yes, I felt different, yes, my brothers felt different. But it really didn't affect us negatively at all." 

In touch with her roots and a vast extended family (family reunions number in the hundreds) Kwong is also a practicing Buddhist who cooked for the Dalai Lama when he visited Australia in 2009. 

"It was one of the great weeks of my life. I still can't believe that it actually happened. We spent all week with him backstage in Sydney," she said. 

"His practice just really encouraged me to keep practicing and doing what we're doing, and to always try harder and harder in everything we do. And to know every single thing that we feel, or think, or do, makes a really big difference."

New Words To Study :

1. over a decade - A decade means a period of ten years. Over a decade means  more than  ten years.

2 appealing - attractive

3.inherit - to get or acquire/receive the same quality. This means that Kylie Kwong loves  cooking like her mother does.

4. fixture - a person or thing long established in the same place or position. Kylie Kwong restaurant has been in Australia for a long time now.

 5.  arty - popular

6.  brings out of you -  develop (a quality, for example) to best advantage

7.  immediate family -

spouse, parents and grand parents, children  and grand children, brothers and sisters, mother in  law and father in law, brothers in law and sisters in law, daughters in law and sons in law

8. suburb - a residential area  around a major city

9.   Vegemite - a kind of  food in  Australia made from yeast and usually spread on bread 

10.  In touch with one's roots  - Roots mean ancestors or  one's great grandparents. Kylie Kwong is now  connected  with her  ancestors/origin.

-0- 

Dear ESL students, 

Keep practicing  English! You'll be better at it. 

Aja, aja English! 

Teacher  Jet 

Skype ID - imteacherjet 

http://esllesson.blogspot.com/
http://eslonlinetutors.blogspot.com/

ESL Students - Who Wants To Be Steve Jobs For 15 Minutes?

This card was from my previous student,Joshua Park.He used to speak slowly because he wanted to have perfect grammatical structures in his sentences.

He memorized Steve Jobs' speech ( Actually,it was not the whole 15 minutes.He only did the 8 minutes and 43 seconds in the video below)
For him,to memorize the speech was a piece of cake; to say it like Steve Jobs did was tough.
In training him,I focused on the field of Accent Neutralization,with the goals of changing speech patterns,intonation and rhythm, and reduction of some syllables.

One would learn a great deal when there's hardship. The card above is a proof that what he had  experienced was worthwhile.


Who wants to be Steve Jobs For 15 Minutes? Play this video, read  the speech , and enjoy!

Thank you.

I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife -- except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.

So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned coke bottles for the five cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the "Mac" would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever -- because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky -- I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz¹ and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a two billion dollar company with over 4000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation -- the Macintosh -- a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.

And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. And so at 30, I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down -- that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me: I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, and I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometime life -- Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. 

You've got to find what you love.

And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking -- and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking -- don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I've looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die.

Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It's Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the "bibles" of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I've always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Just like what Steve Jobs said , "Don't settle!"
Don't settle on  the easy lessons. After you have learned something, go up one level and try to study other areas in English. 


Aja, aja English!
Teacher Jet
email - ajaajaenglish@gmail.com
http://esllesson.blogspot.com/ 
http://eslonlinetutors.blogspot.com/ 


P.S. To Inchae, wherever you are in the world, I had an unforgettable time teaching you!Advanced happy birthday on October 14th ^^ I'm not just quite sure if you still remember some lines in The Sixth Sense.Haha!

Something New About Google Email ( Gmail )

Do you get more mail from your inbox, and you get confused by it all?

Google is doing a good job in filtering spam mails. Recently, it introduces Priority Inbox (in beta) which separates bologna , or “bacn” ( pronounced as “ bacon”) from your important emails. Bologna, or “bacn”, refers to emails that you have subscribed before but you don’t need to read them immediately.
Basically, Priority Inbox divides your inbox to three sections. On the upper part, you can see “Important and unread stuffs. On the middle, you can see the “Starred” emails wherein you can go back to, and below that would be “Everything else” stuffs.

When you frequently email a friend, Gmail would detect and mark that as important. Also, you can help Gmail organize your emails by clicking on two new  icons as important or unimportant.

Go ahead, go to your Gmail beta and see the "New! Priority Inbox" link on the top right corner of your Gmail account. This new e-mail tool will definitely make your life easier!

P.S. Do you want to have a free class with me? Add me on Skype now. imteacherjet 
I'm sure you would have fun!

The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein

Answer the following questions :

1. Who is the main character in the story?
2. What is it looking for ?
3. Can it sing?
4. Why did it decide to let go of the missing piece after it has finally found it ?
5. What is the meaning of the story ?

Bill Gates And Warren Buffett Convince Other Billionaires To Donate The Majority Of Their Wealth

How would you like to donate half of your money to charitable causes? The following article is a big proof that being rich doesn't mean you're bad and money is not the root of all evil.


Meenal Vamburkar | 4:18 pm, August 4th, 2010

[gates_buffett] Bill Gates and Warren Buffett rank second and third respectively on Forbes’ list of billionaires. And while both have been involved in philanthropy for quite some time, it was only recently that they launched The Giving Pledge, a challenge directed toward the country’s wealthy to give away majority of their wealth to charitable causes. Today, 34 billionaires have signed on.

According the initiative’s website, “Each person who chooses to pledge will make this statement publicly, along with a letter explaining their decision to pledge…The Pledge is a moral commitment to give, not a legal contract. It does not involve pooling money or supporting a particular set of causes or organizations.”

Those who have signed on agree to give away at least 50 percent of their wealth during their lifetime or after death. Billionaires who have made the pledge include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, media mogul Ted Turner, David Rockefeller and Oracle CEO and co-founder Larry Ellison.

Buffett, himself, has pledged to give away a whopping 99 percent of his wealth, saying the remaining 1 percent is more than enough to live comfortably:

This pledge will leave my lifestyle untouched and that of my children as well. They have already received significant sums for their personal use and will receive more in the future. They live comfortable and productive lives. And I will continue to live in a manner that gives me everything that I could possibly want in life.

Some material things make my life more enjoyable; many, however, would not. I like having an expensive private plane, but owning a half-dozen homes would be a burden. Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.

The philanthropic initiative is an admirable effort, and it seems likely that more of those who can afford to pledge will do so.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/bill-gates-and-warren-buffett-convince-other-billionaires-to-donate-the-majority-of-their-wealth/

New Words to learn :
a.Philanthropy
n., pl., -pies.

1. The effort or inclination to increase the well-being of humankind, as by charitable aid or donations.
2. Love of humankind in general.
3. Something, such as an activity or institution, intended to promote human welfare.

b.  Initiative 

1. The power or ability to begin or to follow through energetically with a plan or task; enterprise and determination.
2. A beginning or introductory step; an opening move

c. whopping
      Slang.
      adj.
      1..Exceptionally large

http://www.answers.com/