Climate Change

Climate change has been one of the biggest issues in the world for decades. These years, you can really feel the climate changing. You can observe winter become colder and colder in the US and Europe; at the same time winter is nearly disappeared in some area like South Asia. Everyone should have been aware of the problem about climate change. No one should say he/she does not know what it is. Even a kid knows the word “global warming”. However, the situation was not improved but even worsened. A simple deduction is that people just ignore it!

It is now 21st century and we are in a modern world. Electricity is essential to everyone. Computers, which need electricity in order to work, are everywhere and they play vital parts of the world. It seems we cannot live without electricity, which you can see from a power failure. And it is true in some way, without electricity, we will not die immediately, but the whole world will surely collapse. In such a modern world, there is always an increasing demand of electricity and an increasing use of cars, ships and planes. As it needs fuel like coal and oil to produce electricity, there is no difference between using electricity and burning fuel. As a result, we are producing more and more greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide by burning more and more fuel. It is the result when we just ignore the problem of global warming and do nothing about it, which is what most people are doing now.

Why do people ignore such a big problem which will damage our dear planet Earth? A simple reason is that many people are selfish. They do not care what will happen fifty years later. They do not even think about how their offspring could live on such a polluted and dying earth. They just enjoy their lives today. They enjoy using all the technology products like television, computers and mobile phones. They abuse using and wasting fuel, papers, plastics and many other resources because they think they did pay for them and they can do anything they want. They also feel it is stupid if they do not enjoy what they have now but give up all the things to save the environment.

Another reason is that they are lazy. They feel it is too inconvenient to recycle materials and save the use of resources. And they always forget to turn off lights and switch off electric appliances when they do not need them. They also use all kinds of disposables. All of these behaviors are because of convenience, and also laziness. They can help the environment but they just do not want to help.

Therefore, I think people have already realized the problem of global warming, but they just ignore it with several reasons mentioned above. However, to be honest, it is hard to do so much to help the environment in reality. For example, when you have lunch in a fast-food shop, you will probably not bring with your own forks and knifes. And you cannot just move to a forest and live there to reduce using electricity and fuel. But it does not mean that we can just do nothing towards this problem. We should try our very best to do every tiny work to save the earth. Maybe you will think it is too little and it does not help much to save the whole earth. However, if all of us can really do these tiny works, then it would be a huge help and we can save the earth!

The Fascination of a TV series

In Hong Kong, people love watching TV very much. I think people have started to be addicted to it since the first Hong Kong free television broadcaster was launched in 1960s. After that, watching TV has become an important part of all Hong Kong people’s everyday lives.

Since Hong Kong is a small city and we were not part of China before 1997, we only have two local free television broadcasters. Each of them provides two channels, one in Chinese and one in English. Comparing to other cities or countries, we do not have many choices. But maybe it is the reason that the channels we have are mixed with different programs. That is enough for us already; at least most of us enjoy watching them.

American TV series are increasingly popular these years in Hong Kong. They are showing in the two English channels. However, more Hong Kong people like to watch the local TV series than the American ones. There are several reasons. First, some of Hong Kong people (especially old people) do not know English well; they surely like watching Chinese TV series more. Second, the local TV series will be based on our own culture and background (Chinese or Hong Kong), people feel more familiar to them. Moreover, local TV series show every Monday to Friday, and we usually have three of them showing in one channel at one night. Furthermore, unlike the American TV series, we would not show them only once a week but almost every day. People can always talk about them during the day every day. Therefore we can get addicted to them very easily. There is one more difference between American and local TV series, our TV series usually end in a few months (because they show five times a week), it makes people easier to follow and they can shift to a new one very soon in case they do not like it.

I like many of those local TV series, but my recent favourite series is a modern action series called “Emergency Unit”. It is direct sequel to two popular TV series in 2005 and 2007. It is about two undercover agents for the police force trying to expose a triad boss’s crimes. It is a little bit similar to the famous movie “The Departed”. People really like this TV series and it became popular very soon. And the actor who takes the role as one of the undercover agents had a great performance in this series; nearly all people in Hong Kong love him. I also love him as they do. I think he is a good actor and he acts really great all the time but not only in this series. But in my opinion, the main reason makes him so famous is that his character is a excellent policeman but being sent to be an undercover in a triad society for ten years and died finally without resuming his post. We sympathize with his life; and I think that’s why we love him. When his character died in the show, it caused a loud noise and many people felt sad about it. It became a hot issue in Hong Kong for a while, and it attracted more people to watch this TV series. I cannot stop watching this series even I was in Sweden, so I kept watching the online broadcasting every day in last few months.

“Emergency Unit” is a great TV series, and it is not only popular in Hong Kong. Many Chinese people around the world love watching it too. They were discussing about it online every day when the series is still showing. You can see how powerful the Hong Kong local TV series are. I can say American TV series are not much better than our local ones. And that’s why I love them and watch them every day.

Childhood Memories

I was born in the late nineteen eighties and grew up in nineteen nineties. At that time, the computer technology was just at its beginning stage, there were TV games and computer games, but not as common as now. At least we would not sit in front of the computers and play with them all the time. In fact, my elder sister and I only got our first computer when I was eleven or twelve, and the major function of it is for doing homework. We had lived in a different world compared to the kids now; we had a much bigger and wider world than they do!

Instead of playing computers, we spent our time in wide variety of activities. In Hong Kong, we live in tall buildings rather than in houses, maybe it is the reason why most of the time children are not allowed to leave their homes. This phenomenon does not change until now. We spent most of our leisure time at home but during that time we could still enjoy ourselves in a small room without computers. Besides watching TV, we also played games together with our siblings. Not only those board games like Monopoly or UNO we would play, but also some games we invented on our own. We could enjoy a whole day simply playing with some handmade paper swords or paper guns. Even if I was alone sometimes, I could also play happily with Lego and making up stories with them.

Sometimes we went to the park next to our home; you can always find a park nearby in Hong Kong. We could play sports like basketball, badminton and so on. We could also play on the swings and slides in the playground there. But more than these, we would join with other boys and girls there to play some group games. There were often more than twenty of us because many parents brought their children out to playground too! We played hide-and-seek and many other interesting games together. We ran and jumped, laughed and screamed. The time there was really fun! However, I no longer see this scene in any park anymore now. Children don’t like to go to parks anymore; they only go there with their parents when they are small. Some of them may still go to the park, but they just “play” with other kids with their PSPs or Nintendo DSs! The purpose of parks and playgrounds seems to be fading as time passes.

Of course we had thousands of games we can play at home and in the park, but I cannot write them all here. What I want to say is that computer games are not the only games in the world now, children should not play with them all the time. They play ball games in computers virtually, why don’t they just go to the court to play the real one? Children are supposed to be active; they should running and jumping all day. I really wonder if their fitness is still fine by just exercising with their fingers only. It is not healthy to them! Moreover, they cannot learn the communication skill and they don’t know how to co-operate each other, which we learnt from playing group games unconsciously.

In my opinion, the most important thing for a child is their happiness, in condition that things are good to him or her. Maybe children can also enjoy their time now and feel very happy to play with their computer games, yet it is not healthy to them. I am not telling all parents to throw away their kids’ computer games and tell their children to live without them just like what the children did twenty years ago, but they should control the time their kids spend on them. Parents should also encourage children to go out to play with friends in the park, so that they can do some exercise and breathe in some flesh air there. Furthermore, they should buy or make some games (maybe those they played when they were small) for their kids, spend more time with them and play with them. Then children would not spend all of their time with computers again. Finally they will be able to see the big and wonderful world which they could not see before.