Sunday, October 30, 2011

Rewrite Exercises



“Rewrite” exercises are useful to learn more sentence patterns and expressions.

Rewrite the following using the words in brackets without changing the meaning :

1. I have never drunk whisky in my life before. (ever)

2. I haven’t seen him for ages. ( since)

3. He last took a part in a film two years ago. ( for)

4. This is the first time I have ever eaten a lobster. (never)

5. It’s ages since we didn’t have snow here. (for)

6. She hasn’t driven a car for two years. (ago)

7. I have never danced salsa before. (ever)

8. I haven’t met such a boring boy before. (ever)

9. She has never spoken Chinese before.(ever)

10. We have never had such a difficult exam before. (ever)

Answers
1. It is the first time I have ever drunk whisky.
2. It’s ages since I didn’t see him.
3. He hasn’t taken a part in a film for two years.
4. I have never eaten a lobster before.
5. We haven’t had snow her efor ages.
6. She last drove  a car two years ago.
7. It is the first time I have ever danced salsa.
8. He is the most boring boy I have ever seen.
9. This is the first time she has ever spoken Chinese.
10. It is the most difficult exam I have ever had.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Making a Mosaic Project



If you choose to make a mosaic project as a hobby, there are some points that you should take into consideration before you start. First of all, you should try to get a “how to mosaic” book on making mosaics. It will give you a lot of info and tips no matter how old it is. You need to have this sort of a consultation book in which you can find the answers of your questions when you first start making mosaics and while you are improving yourself. Secondly, never ever try making mosaics on a large place, a wall, door, floor at the beginning of your work. Instead, choose small objects like a frame, box, vase because you are just a beginner and you will get the knack of doing this ancient art and get accustomed to the materials such as glue, grout, mosaic pieces and choose the best ones for you. If you try a larger place first, you can’t handle it easily and get a “feel” of the materials and texture much. I usually try to buy mosaics online as it is easier and less time consuming and there are so many good mosaic sites on the internet and my favourite mosaic website is a UK supplier: Mosaic- Direct. If you like, you can visit mosaic- direct and view its pages full of candy-like small mosaic pieces of all kinds.
Try to learn how to make mosaics from the books or internet and create your own work of art having a lot of fun.

 making mosaics, make a mosaic project

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Unreal Past




There are some clauses that are used in the Simple past but refer to Present time or future wishes, regrets, dreams and sometimes facts. Here are some common ones:

1. I WISH…
Wish clauses is always followed by a past tense when they refer to present or future. That’s why past forms of the verbs never refer to real past facts.

I wish you were with me now.(but you aren't )
I wish everybody came to my party this weekend.
I wish I were a rich person . (This is an unreal situation were is used instead of was in order to emphasize this.That means I am not rich but want to be rich.)

You can also use past modals:

I wish I could get a good mark in the exam.


If you want to express your dreams , wishes or regrets about past events, the past perfect tense is used:
I wish I hadn’t met him yesterday. (I am sorry that I met him yesterday.)
I wish I could have visited her.(but I didn’t)

2. It is time …..

The past form of the verb after “It is time…” refers to routine present time activities  or part of a programme or needs.

It is time you studied English.(time for studying Eng.)
It is high time you went to bed.(time for bed)
It is time we practised the songs.

3. As if/ as though

He talks to me as if he were my boss.( In fact, he is not my boss.)
She is looking at me as if she knew me.(She doesn’t know me.)

4. If clauses Unreal present or past, type 2 and 3

If I were a rich man, I would travel all over the world. (I am not rich, this is my dream.)
If I saw him, I would take his photo.

If I had known, I would have helped you.(but I didn’t.)

4. would rather + subject ...

I would rather my child became a doctor.
I would rather she came soon.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

'Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish'

I am saddened to learn of the death of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, because he was one of the greatest of American innovators . He thought differently and believed that  he could change the world and he carried out his mission in this world as he was talented enough to do it.
He was a visionary and with his great ability he transformed our lives. He proved to have the spirit of American creativity and ingenuity. In his garage with a friend, he built his company which became one of the world’s most successful companies later on  and he exemplified how much he was determined and talented by making computers personal and providing the Internet in our cells, moreover, thanks to him the information revolution was not only accessible, but also intuitive and fun. Steve lived every day like it was his last. He always advised, ’You’ve got to find what you love’ and  'Stay hungry, stay foolish'.
I am very sorry for the world’s loss.
Here I would like to share his famous and amazing Commencement address at Stanford University on June 12,2005,which I first knew him from.

You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, 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 6 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 college 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 have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out 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 someday go to college.
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 OK. 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 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 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 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 this 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 ten 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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz 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 $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had 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. 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 worlds 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, I returned 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. Sometimes life hits 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 your 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. 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 until you find it. 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 have 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 to 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 and 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 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 is 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 is 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 1960's, 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, and 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 have 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.




Thursday, October 6, 2011

THE PICTURE OF HAPPINESS

 
 
 
 
 


 
Can you draw the picture of “happiness”, Abidin?

Without taking the easy way out of it ?

Not the picture of angel- faced mum breastfeeding her rose- cheeked baby

And nor picture of  the apples on the white cloth

Nor the picture of red fish going around between water bubbles in the aquarium

Can you draw the picture of “happiness” Abidin?

Can you draw the picture of Cuba in the 1961 midsummer?

Can you draw the picture of 

“Thank God, i have lived today too. No matter if i die “, the Master?

 
Nazım Hikmet Ran


Work and Fun




During the recession period all over the world, due to the problems in the economy of the country, people are suffering from finding a job. It is really hard to find a job but somehow if they start a new  job, this doesn’t mean that they are satisfied with the job conditions even if they want it too much. They begin to complain about the working hours or too much tiring and boring work. Instead, they should try to get the pleasure from what they do every day.
Having fun in our private life is very important. We should not consider work problems at home. Let’s try our best to spend quality time with our beloved ones not wasting even a minute of it. This will make us to empty our minds and go to work in a refreshed way so bear in the mind that we can live work and private life full of fun if we want.