Sentences Analysis

Ngozumpa Glacier in Nepal snakes away from the sixth highest mountain in the world, Cho Oyo.

It's not the greatest glacier to look at - far from it. It's smothered in a layer of rocky debris that's fallen from the surrounding cliffs, giving it a very grey, dirty appearance.

But Ngozumpa is generating a lot of scientific interest at the moment.

The Nepalese Himalayas have been warming significantly more than the global mean temperature in recent decades.

Glaciers in much of the region are showing signs of shrinking, thinning, and retreating; and this is producing a lot of melt water.

On Ngozumpa, some of this water is seen to pool on the surface and then drain away via a series of streams and caverns to the snout of the glacier.

There, some 25km from the mountain, an enormous lake is growing behind a mound of dumped rock fragments.

This lake, called Spillway, has the potential to be about 6km long, 1km wide and 100m deep.

The concern is that this great mass of water could eventually breach the debris dam and hurtle down the valley, sweeping away the Sherpa villages in its path. The threat is not immediate, but it's a situation that needs monitoring, say scientists.

One of the researchers at work on Ngozumpa is Ulyana Horodyskyj, from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16317090

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My favorite book

When I was in high school, I did not like to read at all, and for me was disgusting have to read books that I did not enjoy. My mother was worried about this, because I was getting bad marks; therefore, she decided to give me a very interesting tales book.  She told me that this book would be very popular and also it would be filmed. She was right, and since then I started to read by my own initiative. 

I have read a lot of different styles books, but I enjoy most the books where you do not know what is happening next; for instance, Stephen King, who is a famous American writer, is one of my favorite authors. He is considered as one of the most successful writers of the last time and also he has written an immense variety of stories, although my favorite is the story called “Cell”. This story is about a man called Clayton Riddell who while was walking in Boylston Street in Boston see that when people answer their mobile phone, they go mad and start to behave like a zombie.

Clayton was a cartoonist and he was very happy, because he had been hired to publish his own book, he wanted to tell his wife and child that he gets a new job, but he does not call them, because he hasn’t a mobile phone. As a cartoonist that is meticulous and observant he always looked and analyzed people, so when he was walking down the street, he saw people walking the dog, buying things and also talking at the phone. Suddenly, he heard a shout; he looked and realized that some people started to fight each other without any reason; the cars were out of control, and people ran saying incoherencies. When evening came, he was really worried; everybody who has a mobile phone had gone crazy, and he remembered that his child received one as birthday present. His child, who was called Johnny, was twelve years old and he did not go anywhere without his red mobile phone. Clayton and other person, that he met escaping the disaster, decided to move, they were in Boston, and when they were walking, they saw that they were not the only people sane.

Clayton joined a group of people who wanted to reach a refugee camp; he did not know if his son and his wife would be sane. They know that the disaster had been caused by the radiation of the mobile phones. People started to call this as “The Pulse”, which was a format of human brains. They had to travel during the night, because with the day light these new type of human being were active.

When I read this book, I had a good time, it was interesting and I could not stop reading it. The end, that is unexpected, let me interested and I wanted to know what happened with the characters. The writer knows that with this end the story is more interesting, and I like that. My mother is very happy that I finally enjoy reading, and I am amazed that there is a whole world inside the books.

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A reflection about education

    The educational issue has become in a discussion really important nowadays, so much so that everyone has something to say about it; especially those related to it, such as teachers, high school students, university students and so on, who have been on strike in these previous months.

    The fight was considered at the first moment like something fair, because as everyone claimed the education is a right, must have a good quality for everybody and also, nobody should obtain profits with it. The impressions the movement left, were that the students were organized and knew exactly what to do; the leaders were motivators to the others educational actors, they had the correct words to say and the people who heard them, found that they were right; in contrast with the speech of the authorities who argued that the students’ requirements were utopian and they were impossible to carry out at that moment. Government’s explanation were considered as lies because almost everybody agrees or maybe feels that the economic situation of the country is very good and it is not impossible to have an education without cost, but  quality.

    Nevertheless, the strike has not been a good tool to pressure; in these four or five months of mobilization the students and the politicians have been unable to reach an agreement. This has terrible consequences for all the people involved, for instance to the students who had the courage to confront the authorities and still get nothing to satisfy their requirements, getting even, some that are going to lose the academic year; and the government has seen as an organization which cannot hand over solution to the  problems of population.

    It is hoped that the problematic can be solved in a short period of time, which the involved can take up again the dialog and in this way to not continue damaging the Chilean education.

The comparison of Thucydides, Dingo and The German Boy

It is a little difficult to make a comparison among three stories that a glance they do not look similar at all. But if we are highly detailed when we era reading and put attention to the minimal details, it is possible to found some things which are comparable.

One of the first things that I found is the type of narrator that the authors used to write the three stories. Thucydides, Dingo and The German Boy have a first person narrator, who is a character of the story and tells us what happened to him or her in a particular time. But there are some differences in the way the characters tell their story. The woman in the first story called Thucydides is remembering something about her past, when she was a girl and started to missing classes.

The guy in Dingo, the second story, is also remembering something that happened to him in the past, but this event did not happen few years ago like in Thucydides, but it is something relatively recent.

And in The German Boy, the action happens at the time we are reading the story, but the guy who tell it make a flashback, because he remember Klaus, the new boy of the class, and he remember the time when he went to school with him.

If we talk about the topic of the three stories, I can say that they are contemporary topics, due to all refer to issues that we see, know or experience during our life. Everybody have had a friend whose parents broke up their marriage and it is easy to understand the sorrow that this fact cause, and also why the girl in Thucydides cries when she discovers her father with a woman that is not her mother.

                Also, everybody has had a pet (a dog, a cat and so on) to which we give attention, love, and affection and sometimes we considered as a member of our family.

And in school or day by day, we had had classmates or people that we has met, that are different to us or sometimes we are different to the rest of the class, and we notice the effort that they put to be like the others.

At the same time these topics involve valoric issues which are the faithfulness that the father has not got with the mother of the girl in Thucydides, and the faithfulness that Lucky, the dingo, kept firstly with her owner and finally with her herd; the lie that the girl in Thucydides creates not to go to school, and the lie that the man in The German Boy creates about his job in front of his family.

About the characters of the three stories, I can say that who tells the story is the main character, except in The German Boy, which is Klaus the boy that the narrator refers. In both stories Thucydides and Dingo, we can know more about the feelings of the main characters, because are they who tell the story, so we know the complicated that the girl in Thucydides, felt reading Thucydides (the Greek writer), because as she complained in the story, he was so obscure when he wrote. And also, we know the way her perspective of things change when she discovered what was happen with her father.

The man in Dingo, share his emotions with the reader in a complex way, because he is older than the girl in the first story, he is conscious about what happen with him. He knows that he can not keep the dog with him, therefore he feel foolish with his actions. We can know that he was completely happy when Lucky came back, he cries and he is not regret to do it. Although, he was in charge of the cattle in the countryside, he was prepared to sacrifice his job upon his pet.

In The German Boy it is a little bit difficult to know what happen exactly with the feelings of the main character that is Klaus.  We know that Klaus is a foreign boy in England and only with this fact we know that he feels strange in a place that was not his, even though, it seems he made the effort to be like everyone in that school, the narrator emphasizes that the German boy was different to the rest of the class, but we don not know Klaus’s appreciations; we realize that something is wrong with him when the narrator remembers Klaus crying in the room at night and when the boy informed to him that he was going to speak  only in German, except to him. To understand Klaus, we need to deduce some things from the tale of the narrator.

In The German Boy we know more about the feelings of the narrator, he is afraid of the situation of the company where he works, because he has not told to anybody that the company is bankrupt. He omitted information to his family.

The title of the book is “British Short Stories of Today”, so immediately we can know that the people of the stories live in England. The story called Thucydides happens in Swansea, a city located in The United Kingdom. In the tale the narrator make an extensive description of the place where she lives, and also she describes the weather of the place.

Dingo happens in Australia, which was a colony of England few years ago. Here the narrator makes a description of the place where he lives and works, but he includes a brief description of the vegetations of the place.

It is possible to now that The German Boy happens in England, because the narrator told that the mother of Klaus married an Englishman, but there is anything that refers to the place where the story happens.

The three stories are very interesting, but for me The German Boy was what I liked most, because the woman that appears at the beginning of the story is a mystery. The narrator creates a lot of fake ideas about her; however, we have to create our own story about her and also about Klaus, because at the end we do not know what happens to him.

The Preacher's bad luck

Mr. Boggis was very excited. He almost kept calm, but when he saw his station-wagon he began to run.  The Boggis Commode is yours! He started his car and drove directly to the house of Rummins.

            When Mr. Boggis arrived at the back of the farmhouse, he made the three men out doing something with a saw; the three men turned towards him. "Okay I'm here. Are you ready to put the Commode in my car? The men were sweaty and covered of wooden dust and beside their feet there were mahogany wooden pieces. The men smiled at him and Rummins got closer "We made the work for you" he said and smile like a frog. "I don't understand what you are saying. Did you take out the Commode?"  Mr. Boggis answered back. "Yes, we did. But Claud had another idea; as you only wanted the legs, therefore we decided to saw them off."

            Mr. Boggis turned pale. The Boggis Commode without legs! My dear God! How could this be possible? All his dreams about fame and glory, all the interviews and newspapers with his photograph, the faces of the boys in London, the offers from the fellows and all the bubbles that were rising up in his stomach a minutes ago, suddenly had disappeared. Instead of bubbles, his stomach was full of stones, heavy stones.

             There must be a way to fix it, he thought, something with I could join the legs to the rest of the Commode, something like glue? No, everybody would realize the marks of the saw. Mr. Boggis bent down, his cassock drag over the wooden dust, and picked up one of the legs, "I can't do anything with this" he cried. These three idiots have a unique, rare piece of furniture and they painted and then cut the legs off!

            "Where the rest is?" he wanted to know. It was Bert who answered this time, "When we cut the legs, we think that this enormous thing wouldn't fit inside your car, so we cut it into pieces" Mr. Boggis gave a shout of fright and he fall down.

             When he woke up he saw three faces looking at him and saying something that he couldn't understand. "What happened?" he asked. "You fainted. Do you feel okay" said someone; he didn't know to whom belonged the voice. "Where is the Commode? I came here to take it" He sat down and remembered what had happened, that Rummins and the others had cut the Boggis Commode.

            What people would say about him? He found the fourth Chippendale Commode, which was lost so many years and looked for many others, and then three idiotic farmers destroy it. Mr. Boggis felt dismay because in his nine years since he invented the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture and began to gather the pieces of furniture, none of the owners of that furniture had destroyed it. Everybody had understood that the Society for Preservation was for that, to preserve the furniture not to destroy them. "I hope nobody finds out what has happened, because it will be my end in this business. I will be the joke for years" he wished while he smelled the recently cut mahogany.

            "Do you want the legs, right? If you don't, you have to pay me equally" Rummins claimed, "you promised to pay me twenty pounds and I want my twenty!" Bert and Claud were standing beside Rummins looking at him threateningly. "Calm down gentlemen!" advocated the dealer "I said that I want the legs for my table so... here is the money" he passed the twenty pound to Rummins.

            "If you want, come in and have something to eat, you look sick" invited Bert, "I would like to drink something very strong, In fact, you're right I don't feel so good, something has affected me". Mr. Boggis accepted the invitation.        All the effort that he made to convince Rummins of selling him the piece of furniture was in vain and he felt disappointed of that, I have to improve the form in that I convince my clients, and never repeat that I only need the legs, he thought while he followed Bert inside the house.

             At the end there was nothing he could do just only forget what happened and wait a while because he had to come back to the other house where he saw a beautiful semi-circular table may be the owners could have returned of the church.

            "Don't you have something else that could interest me, Mr. Rummins?"

           

The balance between personal life and work

People have different ways to manage their life and most of cases it depends of various aspects; as individuals we are defined for a lot of things, some less important than others like a comment that we hear when we walking on the street, the artist in fashion or whatever other unimportant thing; another are more or less important, like a the time in which corresponds us to live or the city where we live But, there are also, other aspects which are so important that they mark us and they influence along our entire life; our friends, the decisions that we made and  our family. I think, and actually I am very sure of that, is the most important aspect.

Our family (mother, father and brothers) forms our personality and gives us all the tools, be values or principles, to develop as a complete human being and also, to unwrap us in the society.  We share with our family our thoughts, wishes, longings, decisions, etc., and when we have to choose careers or decided what to do with our life, parents always be there, supporting us or making us think when they are clearly sure we are going in the wrong way. In "The Jack Randa Hotel" story, the principal character, Gail, was alone because she cut herself off from family (or as she said her family cut her off), when she was young, so I believe if she had had her family beside her, supporting or directing what she was doing, maybe she wouldn't have left everything to wander about  the world with either friends or boyfriends, wouldn't have been pregnant and then lost the baby; maybe,  she would have had a different life, adolescent's normal life.

At the time when we start to work, to pay the university or just to have some money, the family and sometimes, friends, advised us to choose well or to motivate us when we are depressed or when we are started something new. It is important to reach a good balance between the personal life and the work, because both are fundamental things in the life of people; when some of these aspects stand out or taking more importance that the other one, the decisions that we take cannot be very good, for example on the one hand, if we work much time or if we get stressed for a work's problem, or even when we are unemployed, our personal life is affected, mainly it is affected the relationship that we have with those that surround us. On the one hand, when our personal problems affected us (for example, when we broke up with a boyfriend or have an argument with a relative or friend), our acting in the work is bad and disappointed.

Gail, was precipitated when she sold her shop and decided to follow Will to Australia; her personal life was more important that her job (she was her own boss!) and she didn´t care about what she would do once she returned from Australia, as if the future won`t exist.

I believe it is impossible to separate two important aspects of our life (personal life and work), but is possible to act and order the things in such way that everything will be in their right place.