nothing's gonna change my world

Global Warming
  We human beings are heating up our planet more than ever, and the outcomes of global warming have already affected our environments. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxides, help to keep our globe in a warm and congenial temperature for lives. However, our planet is now getting too warm due to overly human developments. By burning fossil fuels and clearing forests, we have produced excess amount of greenhouse gases that violates the environments unnaturally. While doing my research on this topic, it is amazing to discover that, in recent five years, at least 200 cities such as London, Taipei, and Shanghai have broken their hottest temperature records which have held for 10 to hundred years. That is, the global warming is happening, and it is indeed altering our environments. It has brought us unexpected effects to our climates, dramatic changes to our terrain features, and unrecoverable damages to our ecosystems.
  First, rising temperature has not only brought us a warmer atmosphere, but also made our climate system run wild. Extreme weathers such as hot winters, early spring arrivals, tsunamis, heat waves, storms, heavy precipitations and droughts happen more frequently and more intense, and these are all considered to be related to global warming. For example, the number of heavy hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years. (Emanuel, 2005) What’s more, people are now easily to compare that the temperatures are higher than before. This winter, we can find that most people in Taiwan still wear t-shirts and that only few cold currents visit our island. The winter comes later and many ski resorts in Europe are forced to close or use snowmakers because there are no enough snows for the visitors to ski. Sure, we can not link any particular climate event directly to global warming; however, it is undeniable that global warming is playing a really important role that triggers unusual climate patterns.
  Next, in response to global warming, our terrain features, especially in the Polar Regions, alter sharply in comparison with the past few decades. Global warming accelerates ices near poles or in high mountains to melt. Last Friday, a huge chunk of ice bigger than the size of Manhattan broke from the ice shelf in Canada, which has been regarded as the biggest broke in recent 25 years. The same group of scientists also pointed out that the size of ice shelves in this region was ten times smaller than it used to be in 1906. (Jones, 2006) Global warming, once again, is one of the major causes. Researchers also discover the ice cap of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, has shrunken 75% since 1972, and might disappear in 15 years. (TIME, 2001) If we cannot find a solution to this heating situation, our Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050 (Adams, 2006). Moreover, the sea level is also responding the melting ice near the poles- it raises and submerges lands near coastlines. A group of scientists have proved that two India islands, Lohachara and Suparibhanga, have been swallowed up by the sea, making 10000 people homeless. (AFP, 2006) According to a documentary film called “The Inconvenient Truth,” the sea level would rise up to 6 meters as the ice keep melting; meanwhile, places near seacoast including Shanghai, Florida, Venice, Taiwan would soon be overwhelmed. A sequence of catastrophes could be predicted, and our terrain features will be totally different due to global warming.

“Hi-Tech Hells” Or “Hi-Tech Heaven”
  It is unbelievable that the world has changed so much in recent twenty years. When I was a child, I thought technology products, such as computers, were just like big monsters with unpleasant noises, lying in a dark laboratory and controlled by crazy scientists. However, these monsters have now become one of the most intimate friends in people’s daily lives. I start to wonder if these technology products have brought people to the “hi-tech heaven” or the “hi-tech hell?”
  It seems that buying high tech products is like buying a ticket to heaven. Thanks to high technology, people are now able to buy devices with all kinds of functions we want, which are promised to bring us more and more convenience and happiness by the manufacturers. For example, we can connect friends easily with cell phones and online messengers; we can purchase all kinds of materials in the online shop, and we no longer have to worry about getting lost by using the Global Positioning System (GPS). Undoubtedly, high technology does improve our lives and give us a chance to make our lives become heaven.
  However, one thing people should keep in mind is that there is still something high technology cannot reach－the human nature. Sitting in front of computers and typing keyboards to connect friends are not always as powerful as a real big hug. Therefore, while enjoying all the benefits bring from high technology, we must remember not losing our mind. Finally, high technology products could bring us better lives.

Engrid 
A girl with smiling face, that's my first impression on Engrid, who sat next to me in the first writing class. She's a junior in the department of Electrophysics, and that’s where I am from, too. We've known each other for a while. After being her close friends for 2 years, I figured out that she's not only a girl with joy, but a girl who likes to bring happiness to others. 
  She likes to spend her free time in the mountains. As she entered NCTU, she joined Sanfu club. In there, she met some friends who also like the mountains and aboriginal culture. During weekends, they went to the mountains, doing things like teaching aboriginal children, hoeing up weeds, making friends with these adorable aborigines. She told me that helping people makes her happy. That's why she likes to share feelings with people, and try her best to bring something for people around her. 
  Well, it's unlucky that she dropped this course for taking one more major; we lost a chance to know her more. Hope she can do great job there.

這學期修的學術英文寫作，研究大學路上土地公廟大家一窩瘋拜拜的情況，寫的時候很累很煩但是頗趣味。老師超認真，所以我也認真了起來，兩個人一整學期寫下來總共寫了十七頁的英文，酷! 不過我覺得我應該再也不會想淌問卷調查這渾水,唔。百樂威，放上來真的是因為有點不甘心外加虛榮心作祟，開玩笑我寫了半年的東西。不過我也只是放放而已，沒有人會真的想看這玩意兒的我知道，哈哈。

God Bless You?

久違了英文作文，這是我這學期第一篇。
My Writing Experiences
I’m not a writing person. That’s the first thing I have to confess in this article. 
 To me, writing is a painful work. Every time I tried to start writing, I always found that there’s chaos in my brain, lots of thoughts came to my mind immediately, but I had no idea picking up right words to express them. After hardly picking up a very indifferent starting sentence, the chaos was gone, and so were my thoughts. Therefore, my writing works were always very normal and not so impressive. That’s why I hate writing, writing classes, and any subject that required handing papers. I didn’t know how to write a good article, an article that people wanted to read. I didn’t get any achievement here. So I didn’t think I am a writing person. I became vary passive in writing. And the scores of my Chinese writing in my college entrance exam honestly reflected my inattentive attitude. I got only 8, out of 30.  
And things became worse when it comes to English. Because the vocabularies were fewer then my native language, the picking-up-right-words process took me much more time than in Chinese. But I do love English; this is one of my favorite subjects. So I did some effort to improve my poor writing skill by memorizing some established sentences given by the cram school. It did work at first, but later I discovered that this method can only kill more and more thoughts of my own. Since then, I gave up memorizing the sentences, and stop making any other effort to improve my writing skills. I convinced myself that writing is not as important as reading or speaking. 
But things did change in my college life. I didn’t hate writing as much as before. I found that writing is a powerful tool of express oneself. And by writing, one can trained his ability of thinking because he had to think over and over before writing down. Although I still think writing is really a painful work, writing now has become a challenge that I want to overcome. That’s why I took this writing course.