Ever watch a Taiwanese drama and go “WTF?”, well yeah, I have and I’ve decided to list some of the biggest WTF moment. The list only have the dramas that I’ve seen, so there’s other WTF momment from other dramas that you’ve seen, don’t hesitate to comment!

7. This WTF goes to every times a lead female role in a Taiwanese drama says “You stole my first kiss”.
WTF, are we being serious here? You can’t fool me. Let’s be a little more realistic here. Some body please prove me wrong on this!

6. Smiling Pasta (Little Turtle Love confession at school)
Maybe it’s a Taiwanese thing and I just don’t know about it, but what is up with the public love confession between He Qun and Xiao Shi? Especially the one at school when she’s wearing a turtle shell and standing on Ah Zhe’s car with a big ass turtle flag! WTF is that? Are we serious?

5. Corner With Love (Rich girl - Poor guy)
Rich girl falling for an omelet making dude deserves a WTF. Dream on baby!

4. Meteor Garden (CGI helicopter dropping flowers during graduation)
I know this drama was made in 2001, but those helicopters at the graduation ceremony was the low point of this drama. I love this drama, but I had to go “WTF were they thinking?” My five years old nephew could tell that it was fake.

3. Romantic Princess (Ending)
I give this drama 3/5 stars, but I watched the whole season and expected a decent ending. What I got was a WTF kind of ending. Are the writers serious? The guy and the girl are together in the end, but the girl is going off to America for 4 years to attend CEO training. WTF? Where is happily ever after?

2. Fated to love you (The baby Died)
When Xin Yi lost her baby during the accident, I stood up and said, “WTF, did that just happened?” The whole show was revolved around the baby. Now he’s gone! This isn’t a bad WTF, it’s a good “WTF” because it actually made the show more interesting.

1. Meteor Garden II (THE WHOLE SEASON)
I just can’t decide which part of Meteor garden II was a WTF moment because the whole season was a WTF moment! Why did they make Dao Ming Si fall in love with a runaway prince from WTF was that country? Also, WTF was that illness that she had, WTF did Vic Zhou’s character gets in the end…NOTHING! Nice guys always finish last. I’m glad Boys Over Flowers filtered down MGII into less then 2 episode. I love the first Meteor Garden, but the second kills me. I was WTFing the whole time watching this.

Well read on! Welcome to the specially designed Goku Warrior Challenge!!

Doing this challenge right here will make you fast and strong! Here I have developed, inspired by Goku’s godly nature and the new movie coming out (if Asian please watch new movie), a great workout challenge to make you fast, to make you strong, to make you run at the speed of light and execute daring energy attacks! You might even get mind powers! The secret? Oh here’s the secret:

Blonde hair dye, extra strength gel, hair spray, orange clothing and the ability to scream really loudly.

But seriously, if you want to become strong, read on you maggot!

I stress that you begin each of these exercises slowly and then work towards getting them in towards the time limit. Slowly build over time and speed and you’ll get there. However do not slack off. The aim is to execute and finish with extra energy and good form, these exercises. If you use bad form, you will end up injuring yourself, and if you do these too slowly, you will not lose weight and you will not get ‘fit’. Again, these workouts are not meant to make you ‘big’. If you thought this was for bodybuilding, think again. You can’t be as fast as Goku if you bodybuild. Tons and tons of muscle and being big does not necessarily equate to being faster than the speed of light.

Workout Number One shall be executed in under sixty minutes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Workout Number Two shall be executed in under forty minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Here is Warrior Challenge Workout Number One: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays.

Warm up: Run 1 mile.

Super set: x3

Burpies (x15), Lunges (x20), Diamond Pushups (x10), Jumping Jacks (x25), Burpies (x10), Pull ups (for laterals) (x5-10), Ball Throws (10), Burpies (x5), Clap-push-ups, various pushup variants (x5), 500m row (x1) on Ergonomic (rowing) machine.

You do 3 sets of each exercise with 15 to 25 repetitions for one set :). The rowing is done three times for three sets. Just one sprint of 500m in each set. Do more if you know you can.

Running:

2-4 miles. Time to beat: 30 minutes.

Remember to eat afterwards

Workout Number Two: (Tuesdays, Thursdays).

Warm-up: Run 2-3 miles

Superset: x3

Burpies (x15), Mountain climber’s (x20), Jumping Jacks (x25), diamond push-ups (x10), Burpies (x10), Lunges (x20), Pull-ups (x5), Ball Throws (x10), Burpies (x5), regular pushups (x5) .

Running: 0.5 miles. Time to beat: 3 minutes.

End with:

2×500m row (row as 500m as fast as you can, pause for 45 seconds, and then do another 500.) Time to beat: 1m52sec.

Thats it!

I do encourage lifting. However my emphasis here is on building speed and high levels of stamina and equal strength all over the body.

If you feel like it, add this:

MWF: 2×5000m row. (To replace the running beforehand or just after the workout afterwards). Time to beat: 22m, 31 sec, for each 5000m row.

TTH: 1×10000m row: (To replace running beforehand or just after the workout is finished to improve cardio and stretch everything out. ). Time to beat….I leave it up to you!

After all that, remember to eat well and have a balanced diet!

LASTLY!

Dye your hair blonde, spike it reaaaal good, put on an orange jumpsuit, walk outside and in the voice of a warrior scream the ultimate battlecry:

KAME-KAAAAAMMMMMEEEEE-KAAAAAAMMMMEMEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Thus, my young students you begin the process towards Goku-like godhood! Kame Kame Kame HAAAAAAA!!!!

See a doctor or physician before trying any of these workouts/warrior challenges. These are risky to the beginner.

I am not a physician, or doctor. However I am a rugby player and this workout is designed to make you fast and strong with a focus on endurance. It has taken me over 4 years to design this. Before I just used to do running with a slight focus on lifting. That was wrong and so I have tweaked my workout to the extent that I am gaining results from what I have modified.

This workout will not make your muscles big. If you have any health related problems, do not execute this warrior challenge workout. If you do not know how to do these exercises, do not execute them. If you are not determined enough, do not execute these exercises. You may just end up harming yourself.

I did not vote in this past election. I believed that it was just another form of political masturbation. People satisfied each other by pulling reactions out of the other person. Barack Obama won, John McCain lost. To be honest, I was rooting for the McCain campaign. To be honest, I’m not rich, my family lives in the third world, barely make ends meet and have huge loans (not to mention the interest) to pay off after graduation this coming Spring Semester. All in all, I voted for McCain due to his experience and lengthy military service. I did not care for much else since these were what I saw in McCain and identified most with (his political experience and length of military service(its loyalty of the highest!)). I was not sure about Barack. He seemed flimsy on a few points, and I hope he helps to improve the military. But he was elected anyway. For now its up to political analysts to criticize Barack, we historians will get at him after his four years are up. So I will stand by and watch the bullets fly as people in this new political period start to satisfy each other again by frustrating each other. Its not really political masturbation anymore, its a sort of Sado-Masochism, but that this isnt found on twenty-buck porno videos and dvds, and you find it on C-Span, CNN, Fox News and the other political news channels. And its already started. Some GOP twit (I am Republican by nature, but please, come on, this is just plain embarrasing.) decided to mess around with Ol’Hillary and her career as Secretary of State. Yes, she sucks, but four years pass quick and she’ll be out. In & Out… Boy, don’t people just love sex? On the 20th of January 2009, Barack Obama was officially inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America. The crowds were cheering, people were happy, Wall Street’s case of financial herpes acted up again causing the Dow to plunge even more to the embarrasment of the world, and there was a generally cheerful atmosphere around. Here’s where the hard part begins.

1) This election was not about race. If we are still referring to Barack Obama as an African-American, then this election was about race. You are either American or not. Barack Obama is partially white and this confuses his title even further. Get rid of these titles. There are no Asian Americans, there are no Latino/Hispanic Americans, there are no Muslim/Middle Eastern Americans, there are no Slavic-Americans, there are no Irish Americans, and there are no African Americans. Titles such as these create the illusion that we are all still different. This creates racial boundaries, confusion, and so on. Get rid of it. We are either American or not. We live in this country called the United States of America. I dont see the word JAPAN in there anywhere. Or China, or Pakistan, or the Phillipines, or Russia. You would not say “I’m a Scottish Brit”. Its just plain stupid. 2) Barack Obama is not a demi-god. This is a little scary. I’ll go chronological with this one. The last time I’ve seen people literally adore one human as a sort of demi-god starts with this list below. These are handpicked for conciseness: Franklin D. Roosevelt: Amazing president, he created three New Deals, each of which failed in the long term but connected America’s infrastructure. Standardization became even more widespread. At his peak, he enjoyed untold popularity.

The war saved his faltering programs and with victory in sight and a UNITED country behind him his reputation as a great leader was established. However, he’s not a demi-god. His New Deal programs spent too much money, and each one failed! Adolf Hitler: I’m going to go to the clapper for this one. He restored confidence in the German people following the Versailles Treaty in 1919 and the Wall Street Crashes which ruined Germany’s economy. He created jobs, a sense of security in the country, and was able to connect all three factors (through the use of his buddies Goebells, Himmler, etc), social, economic and political in Germany very well. Economic structures such as the construction of the autobahn. Social such as youth programs. Political by creating political stability, even though at a great cost. However, he led his country into another big war, lost, shot himself in a bunker, and now the Russians have a bit of his skull lying around somewhere. He caused the Holocaust, and Germany was split into two parts for just over forty years. Ronald Reagan: Came in the middle of a Recession, created growth and kicked ass in the First Gulf War. Bad part, recession started again just before the end of his presidency. Something the first Bush had to deal with. Barack H. Obama: Barack Obama may have achieved great things and we do not know what yet his term has yet to offer. However, he is not a demi-god. As much as he is a ‘Change’ from eight years of Republican presidency under Former President George W. Bush he still needs to walk the walk if he can talk the talk. I see good speeches and some activity from him, but he’s still flatlining on the monitor. Just because he’s a different skin colour, different this, different that, does not make him a demigod. People, do some analysis, be realistic and send in your advice to this new president on how you think he could help out the USA. For example, the economy, education, and catching Bin Laden by his wrinkled beard and beating him over the head with a Chicago manufactured baseball bat that has the words “FREEDOM” written all over it.

Advice is for example: Economic aspects such as X and W could be improved by causing P to move and tell Y that this is wrong/right. Education in the inner cities can be improved by adding this to the curriculum, enhancing the passing standard for X tests, creating A and C youth programs, doing G to teachers and professors, etc. Catching Bin Laden could be done in this way by using X Regiments being sent to Y area, with this division being deployed to J area that is adjacent to Y area as an artillery net.

Advice is not: MR. OBAMA, PLEASE CAN YOU EXPAND THE WELFARE PROGRAMS, MY WIFE AND NINE KIDS ARE STARVING AND I HAVENT HAD A JOB IN FORTY YEARS, HERE IS MY RESUME GIVE ME A JOB. And it turns out to be a burned out hippie who uses his welfare money to buy weed.

Now, onto the main point.

I was pleased to see that President Obama used Franklin D. Roosevelts applied idea of the New Deal as part of his inspiration to create jobs in America. He’s going to do the same thing- restore the crumbling infrastructure. But this is going to be like Red-Bull. It lasts only a short period of time and after a while depending on your metabolism, you either get tired slowly, or you get tired quickly because you crash from the drop in stimulant reserve.

For us students, graduating in May 2009, we need a New Deal 2.0 and it is great to see that President Obama has been inspired by that concept. But what about the long term effects? FDR’s first New Deal only lasted three-odd years. The second New Deal just managed to make it to three, and the third was going to collapse, but was saved by World War II. You could argue for a fourth New Deal given the level of mobilization during World War II but thats for another time. I want a New Deal. I want to be able to use my resume and the skills I have acquired and fulfill potentials. I want to not only be able to have the concept of getting a job after graduating, but also have the view in my head of creating my own job and business and ensuring that that will stay contribute to the economy.

–  Parveen Ali, 26, Binghamton, N.Y., Pakistan

–  Almir O. Alves, 43, Unknown, Brazil

–  Marc Henry Bernard, 44, Endicott, N.Y., Haiti

–  Maria Sonia Bernard, 46, Endicott, N.Y., Haiti

–  Hai Hong Zhong, 54, Endwell, N.Y., China

–  Lan Ho, 39, Binghamton, N.Y., Vietnam

–  Hong Xiu Mao, 35, Greene, N.Y., China

–  Jiang Ling, 22, Endicott, N.Y., China

–  Layla Khalil, 57, Binghamton, N.Y., Iraq

–  Roberta Bobby King, 72, Binghamton, N.Y., U.S.

–  Li Guo, 47, Binghamton, N.Y., China

–  Dolores Yigal, 53, Binghamton, N.Y., Philippines

–  Maria Zobniw, 60, Binghamton, N.Y., U.S.

R.I.P for the 13 victims

–  Jiverly A. Wong, 41, Johnson City, N.Y., Vietnam (gunman)
For the gunman, may he suffer in his next life.

When I first saw who was playing Goku (also known as Kakarot, if you are a saiyan), I was suprise. How can an Asian anime protoganist be play by a white man. People argued that because he “looks” white in the cartoon show, but I don’t buy that. 

Matt Thorn makes a very intriguing argument about why Japanese cartoon character looks so westernize. 

“In the case of cartooning, of course, we are dealing with drawn representations rather than words, but the concept of “marked/unmarked” is every bit as salient. In the case of the U.S., and indeed the entire European-dominated world, the unmarked category in drawn representations would be the face of the European. The European face is, as it were, the default face. Draw a circle, add two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth, and you have, in the European sphere, a European face. (More specifically, you would have a male European face. The addition of eyelashes would make it female.) Non-Europeans, however, must be marked in drawn or painted representations, just as they commonly are in daily conversation (e.g., “I have this Black friend who…”).

The grotesque racial and ethnic stereotyping of former decades has been largely purged from the mainstream, but only to be replaced by less offensive, yet nonetheless stereotyped, signifiers. Non-Europeans living in a European-dominated society absorb these standards themselves, and not only are continuously made to be aware of their “otherness,” but adhere, out of necessity, to the Eurocentric system of signification. If an American of Asian descent wants to create a children’s book intended to build self-esteem among Asian American children and educate other children about Asian American experiences, she must first make sure the readers know that the characters represented are Asian, and so, consciously or not, she resorts to stereotyped signifiers that are easily recognizable, such as “slanted” eyes (an exaggerated representation of the epicanthic fold that is often, but not always, more pronounced in East Asians than in Europeans or Africans) or pitch black, straight hair (regardless of the fact that East Asian hair can range from near-black to reddish brown, and is often wavy or even frizzy). So it is that Americans and others raised in European-dominated societies, regardless of their background, will see a circle with two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth, free of racial signifiers, as “white.”

Japan, however, is not and never has been a European-dominated society. The Japanese are not Other within their own borders, and therefore drawn (or painted or sculpted) representations of, by and for Japanese do not, as a rule, include stereotyped racial markers. A circle with two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth is, by default, Japanese.”

Read his full article here….

The one and only reason he is white is because Asian male lead/all Asian caste is not very marketable in the American and European market. I do not think that the people who made the movie are racist, but they are realist. Hollywood knows that this movie will not do well if it is an all Asian caste. Take the movie 21, for example, this was about two Asian American and it was suppose to be an Asian dominated caste, but in the end, we have a white protagonist and a white dominated caste. To read more about the casting of the movie 21, read the article “Opinion: ‘21’ Discriminatory Casting Unjustified“. 

At the end of the day, I will probably go see this movie. But I will not be the only asian boy that is upset because they have turn my asian superhero into a white man. How would the white kids feel if the next Superman movie has an Asian guy playing Superman (since Goku and Superman are both alien, any race can play their role). 

What it all comes down to is money. 

Cheers

Through all of this the concept of learning took a very high position. For an orderly society to be an orderly society and peace to exist, people had to learn. For Kong Zi, learning had a positive effect on the moral quality of the individual. Learning knowledge should help people contribute to the stability of society because the knowledge that people learned would help them to understand the overall picture and work towards maintaining the stability of society. Furthermore, when people gained a full understanding of any subject, it gave them one whole understanding of one way of looking at the world. Then they could progress to learn more and contribute to society’s stability even more. Constant Education brought peace for both the society and the individual. If people were not constantly educated, and did not proceed with self cultivation, people would only see a small part of the picture and act to fulfill their interpretation of that fraction which would create instability which would disrupt the existence of peace. Instability would lead to the dissolution of society and furthermore, helped to disrupt the moral education of people. This would bring no benefit to people in any way.
Meng Zi, held the same idea that education was essential to the maintenance of an orderly society.  However concerning humans, Meng Zi held a different opinion. Unlike Kong Zi who saw humans as a blank sheet of paper, Meng Zi believed that humans were innately good beings. Humans had the latent ability to be good, however it was the situations that made them immoral beings. To create an orderly society, people had to understand themselves before even beginning to think of understanding external knowledge. As you can see this differs from Kong Zi’s approach that Self Cultivation and Education take place at the same time. If people developed themselves first so that they understood themselves fully then they could fully achieve societal standards (ritual) and begin to learn in order to benefit society. People would filter out the bad elements existing within the current society through the knowledge that they learned and the will to create peace and maintain the current order.
So what you college students need to learn from this is that even though you may learn quite a bit here in university, what you learn should be understood fully before its application. If you learn something you should not immediately criticize it but instead learn every single facet of its implications and everything about it. This will ensure that you learn more and also that knowing all about something wont lead you into moral conundrums in the future. Constant education means that your education does not finish after three or four years depending on which country you are educated in. Constant education means that even if you are walking on the street that you continue to analyze the problems around you and learn from them instead of ignoring them!

At the start of these Fall Semester months I decided to participate in various activities that would help to relieve me of the stress of schoolwork and the pressure that I assume that you all feel because of the bad way the economy is headed. These activities that I participate in are few but meaningful. Going to the library to read some books, doing research on Russian Literature and Chinese Philosophy, or just taking a pleasant stroll around the campus that I currently attend.

As much as I love to do these activities I can’t help but be observant of the number of people failing to use correct grammar. These very people claim to have had an educated childhood and as such parade it around for most to see. Yet for some reason they have little grasp of the grammatical structures of language and have little concern for how badly they have mutilated the English language.

Let me show you a list of these mistakes created by people the parents of which should have decided on abortion first…

1) Citation: I will be gentle and harsh with this one significant mistake. When you arrive at University, College, or any Institution for Higher education you are usually taught to use ‘MLA’- Modern Language Association format for citations. This means placing the full name and work of the Author along with the page number for the first citation of that work in your essay inside brackets. Following this you need only place the surname followed by the page number in brackets for citations using the same piece of work. The Citation Page at the end should include the Authors name, article, the date on which the article was published, and the numbers of the page that you have cited in your essay.

Below is an MLA category citation:

“To support my thesis, Shakespeare states in Act 3, Scene 1, that “To be, or not to be: that is the question…”(William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1, Pg. 54, Oxford University Press).

And then:

“Get thee to a nunnery!” (Shakespeare, 58)

After your first year, you should switch to using the Chicago style of citation. This involves using Footnotes and an Annotated Bibliography page to demonstrate why the sources you used were important in your argument. You should also write what these sources are about and where they came from. Annotated Bibliographies do not consist of this type of writing that gives evidence to the possibility that you were banged too many times on the head as a kid:

Example Number One:

“Source X is important because it supports the argument and the essay. Source X is also important because its good…”

As you may see, right from the get-go, this is not an annotation and it is not even worth giving a point/mark for. Below I will show you how to write a proper annotation.

Example Number Two:

“Source X was written in 1916 in response to the Tsarist Governments bad decisions to continue the War with Germany and Austria because continuation of the war would help accelerate the deterioration of the already fragile Russian economy and the political instability in Russia. Source X supports my argument because it demonstrates the increasingly volatile situation in Russia in 1916 which shows that…”

When you are in your last year of college, or in the process of writing a research paper, Honors thesis, dissertation (if you are in Europe), you should not be using MLA but Chicago. Not only does MLA show that you have not advanced your ability to construct papers, it is not professional. For the sake of your professors and the general mental health of the people, please use Chicago. It would help to not have a stroke because people do not know how to construct professional papers!

2) Writing in Text Format: You see this on television, instant messages, billboards, and most of all, on your cellphone screen. People, when you have the chance to, please write the whole word! Not only is this way of writing inappropriate it is also an eyesore! We have Nine Keys with which to construct words, 26-30 letters (depending on your country of origin), and now cellphones have large screens and miniature keyboards ! Are we so dumb that we have to abbreviate every word that we write?  It’s not fashionable, it’s not funny, it is not ‘hip’ or cool, it is mutilated grammar. This format of writing was created for the time when cellphones had very small screens so people had to economize on letters. Remember the Nokia 3330? Now we don’t have to because the screens are huge and most cellphones come with tiny keyboards! Notice a difference? The need to economize because technology had not advanced so far yet and the need not to economize because there is no real need to at the moment since technology has reached that point where it is perfectly fine to write with full words!

And folks, please, when you are writing up signs and posters, please use whole words. You have enough space, and if you think you do not, be CREATIVE. This is one reason as to why we evolved to have brains.

The more you use text your fragile little grasp of grammatical structures and that little collection of grey matter up in that big round bony thing sitting on your neck evaporates! Collectively, the mental capabilities of the country drop another two or three points, but people are happy with that. Come on people if we believe we are species occupying the Number One spot on the evolutionary table, lets prove it by writing correctly.

3) Speaking Correctly: This is just ridiculous. Interspersing every other word with words such as ‘like’ do not make you sound your age. One could compare you to a thirteen-year old attempting to sound big by putting as many words into a sentence. Its not funny, its not grammatically correct and it makes you sound even more stupid. Read more books, gain a greater grasp of language structures and increase your vocabulary. Desperate Housewives does not count as a source with which to increase your word range.

To increase the strength of this argument I will also look at another mistake that people make and this mistake is called waffling. If you cannot remember a word, stop drawling on, stop everything you will say and think about what and how the succeeding sentence should progress. For us on the receiving end its bad enough that you lack a capable and diverse vocabulary, but now you have to waffle! We need this like we need every Sexually Transmitted Disease in the world circulating in our system along with Ebola and a fatty embolism traveling up and down our blood vessels.

4) Paragraphs: Paragraphs should be at the least three sentences and at the most, six to nine sentences. Paragraphs are not twelve or two sentences long and in the case of the former, make no points to support the thesis and waffle on. This bores readers and it does not do anything better for you.

5) Papers, Essays, and Paragraph Content and Structure: The start of an essay should include a thesis and in this thesis paragraph you explain why and how this thesis originated. It is best to provide some context before making the thesis statement.

The second paragraph should explain what type of essay you are writing and from what viewpoint. This does not necessarily mean you restate your thesis but that you do inform the reader of any special terms that you will be using. I will using an extract from one of my History research papers:

“As this paper will look at the economic, historical and political aspects of the Great Depression, I will draw upon economic terminology in the explanation of my thesis. The use of economic concepts will be especially helpful in explaining and criticizing the actions of Federal Reserve economists and leading politicians. Therefore it is valuable to define briefly the key terms.”

As you can see I have stated indirectly that this will be an economic-history essay and therefore will require the use of economic terminology. I will then define any terms that the reader will probably not know about.

The third paragraph either explains terms, or if you need not explain special terms, begins the main passage of your essay. In this third paragraph you can either begin explaining your thesis and set it up for source support in the following paragraphs, or you can begin setting up the context.

Below is one example:

“Income uncertainty in the agricultural sector can be argued to have increased the deflationary effects of the Wall Street Crash( The Great Depression). More specifically, through mistakes and short-sightedness of both the decentralized US government and farmers in the early 1920’s precipitated the crash. To understand how and why income uncertainty caused the Great Depression I will examine this period of rapid economic growth…”

After this point in the essay I described the chain effect leading up to the Great Depression as a result of agricultural uncertainty but that is another story.

Your suceeding paragraphs after this should begin explaining the aforementioned thesis and then begin the backup (no dilly-dallying or waffling, think of this as being in a firefight - if you stick your head up to look at the birds fly for just two seconds you leave yourself exposed, and then you get killed) with secondary sources. Secondary sources must then be backed up with Primary sources with explanations for the validity of this support following immediately.

Always try to follow up with a counter-argument. If you openly try to destroy your thesis with various counter-arguments (that you will blast away in the final paragraphs) this makes your paper not only balanced but it also shows that you did not become narrow minded while researching and creating your thesis. Creating a counter-argument gets you bonus points!

Last we arrive at the concluding paragraphs of the paper. Conclusions must be short, concise, summarize your thesis and the invalidity of the counter-arguments. Conclusions must also evaluate your thesis stating the conditions under which it was and the conditions under which it could not be valid.

6) Organization: I intentionally left this until last. Writing and Speaking must be organized, planned and created to make the point clear. As you can see, this piece in itself is not very organized. The confused nature with which this written piece is presented was intentional. You have to organize what you say in speaking and writing. Organization not only gets you more points but it also means that people do not have to spend more time than is needed to understand what you mean.

I hope this short piece has helped you to some extent.

For the extracts from my Research Paper I have provided the link below:

http://www.theasianeconomist.com/a-small-look-at-the-wall-street-crash-and-the-great-depression/

Thank you, have a good day/night wherever you are reading this article. If you happen to know any other grammatical mistakes people make on a daily basis in both speaking and writing please send me a message and I will add that mistake to this article!

Tian Yi.

In response to: J. Vreeland, Download FULL PDF “Why Do Governments and the IMF Enter into Agreements? Statistically Selected Cases,” International Political Science Review, 24.3 (2003).

Vreeland’s article, “Why Do Governments and the IMF Enter into Agreements? Statistically Selected Cases,” questions the reason why governments and the IMF enter into an agreement. He offers the conventional reason that governments need an IMF loan but he also offers an alternative reason: governments actually want IMF to impose economic sanctions that would otherwise be too unpopular to be passed in the country. Thus his thesis is that whether or not a country wants an IMF loan is dependent upon “their stance toward IMF conditionality rather than their need for an IMF loan” (Vreeland 2003, 324). He supports his claim by evaluating two countries: one country that has an IMF loan but does not have a strong need for one, while the other is a country that needs an IMF loan but does not want one. First he talks about his rational for choosing the two countries, then he analyzes the two countries in depth, and finally he offers his conclusion.

Vreeland picks the countries for his analysis first by looking at countries in need of foreign exchange. While looking at the statistics provided by the IMF in 2000 he saw that although 689 countries with low reserves is participating in an IMF loan, 942 others are not. Another anomaly is that 487 countries with reserves are participating in an IMF loan. These statistical anomalies are the reason why he picked the two countries that he did. He picked “Uruguay in 1990 had the strongest reserves of any country ever to enter into an agreement, with both the balance of payments and the current account in surplus” (Vreeland 2003, 324). Then he picked Tanzania in 1982 because it had the worst reserves but did not enter into an IMF agreement for another three years.

Vreeland uses Uruguay to support his claim that countries enter into agreements not so much for the injection of money into the economy, but rather the government wants the IMF to help reinforce unpopular economic reforms. Although Uruguay held a “strong foreign-reserves position” (Vreeland 2003, 324) it still had economic problems such as the highest inflation in two decades, increasing foreign debt and a decreasing investment and GNP. These problems along with lack of party discipline, the patron-client promotion system that “failed to reward technocrats” (Vreeland 2003, 327) and the national referendum that could veto the president’s reforms encouraged the newly elected administration in Uruguay to administer economic reform. President Lacalle of Uruguay needed the IMF on his side in order to administer his unpopular economic reforms in order to 1) retain his seat as president; 2) to help his country in the time of economic turmoil and; 3) to help his country in order to retain his seat as president. Vreeland’s claim that Uruguay signed onto the IMF loan because Lacalle wanted the IMF restrictions is evident by how the Lacalle government carried out the IMF conditions. Lacalle told his people that he planned on signing the IMF agreement within two weeks, but the agreement was not signed until nine months later. During that time though, Lacalle implemented the economic reforms that he wanted to under the image that it was actually imposed by the international organization.

Not all countries want IMF conditions in their countries though, no matter how bad their economy is actually failing. Tanzania in 1983 is the perfect example. Although the government of Tanzania desperately needed international aid, it rejected IMF help because they did not want to impose the IMF agreements. For Tanzania to sign onto an agreement in 1980, the government would have to agree to the following: “currency devaluation of 50-60 percent, reduction of the government’s budget deficit, a freeze on wage increases, ‘commercially sound’ parastatal policies, increased interest rates, increased producer prices and the removal of import controls” (Vreeland 2003, 335). It was only after three more years of failed economic reforms by the government itself did Tanzania sign onto an IMF agreement and a main reason is because reformation of the previous agreement was established.

So, we see that although Uruguay and Tanzania are on the opposite sides of the spectrum when they accepted IMF aid, the reasons for both are the same: because they want the conditions within the agreement to be imposed. The same reason was why Tanzania did not sign on initially. What this says though is that conditions are more important than just monetary aid. This depicts how countries use international aid in order to further their own political agenda. Although I agree with Vreeland’s thesis, I find that using the case study of only two countries is not sufficient. His case studies were of countries on the two extremes, what about the countries in the middle of the spectrum?

BEIJING, CHINA - GOME is one of the biggest electronic super store in China, with SUNING, they are the best buy of China. Unfortunate news are coming from China stating that the president of GOME is under investigation. After this news, he seem to have disappear.

“Trading in a Chinese electrical appliances company [GOME] was halted Monday after reports that its chairman — the richest man in mainland China — is under investigation on charges of stock market manipulation, the company said.” - cnn

The CEO, Huang, had a rag to riches story, so I was quite disappointed to see this story from China.

“According to Chinese media reports, Huang, whose net worth of $6.3 billion ranked him as China’s richest person in the 2008 annual Hurun Report on the country’s most affluent, is under investigation over unusual price movements of Shanghai-listed pharmaceutical and medical equipment company Shandong Jintai Group. The company, controlled by Huang’s brother Huang Junqin, saw its shares surge more than 900% in the first eight months of 2007 before they were suspended.

Huang’s is a typical rags-to-riches China tale. He and his brother began hawking radios and other electrical components from a roadside stall after he moved to Beijing as a teenager. He eventually built his business into the country’s largest retail chain (BusinessWeek.com, 9/10/08), which he listed in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the company’s largest shareholder with 34%. Last October, Gome became the first Chinese retailer to team up with Dell (DELL) to sell the U.S. company’s computers in its stores.

The alleged arrest of Huang does not come as a complete surprise. The fast and loose business methods by which several high-flying Chinese tycoons have amassed huge fortunes can run afoul of the law. Earlier this year, Shanghai’s most successful property developer, Zhou Zhengyi, received a 16-year sentence in connection with a scam in which social security funds were channeled illegally into a property development. The scandal also resulted in the sacking of Chen Liangyu, Shanghai’s Communist party secretary”

- businessweek

Why did I want to create a social network for Khmer? One reason: Because I believe I can do it better then any other Khmer social network on the internet now. Most online Khmer community have only one or two features. Some are Forum base, some are videos, some are just a place to read and write poem about Khmer.

Features of KhmerMix.com

• Personalize Profile page (Facebook-like)
• Share Photos and Videos
• Global Forums
• Create groups
• News
• Personal Blog
• Video Chat
• Voice Chat
• personal Messenger system
• A guarantee from the founder that KhmerMix will become the largest Khmer social networking site

What does KhmerMix.com have to offer? All of the above and then some. I believe that owners of the many Khmer social network just create it, get some members and stop doing their job as the head of the social network. They don’t advertise, they don’t reach out anymore. They don’t expand or offer any new incentives. KhmerMix.com will not quit on its members and it will be the biggest and most well-known social network for Khmer all around the world. Some Khmer social network are just for Cambodian-American, some are just for Cambodian living in Cambodia. I want to combine those two groups and many other Khmer group together, in one place. Khmer people need to unite, and KhmerMix.com will be the place to bring change and unity.

At KhmerMix.com, it offers the basics features as any social network but it also has some other goodies. First, the backbone is base off of facebook. You get a profile page and you can see activities of what you friends are doing. But it doesn’t stop there. We also have the forum where we can all come together and chit-chat (we, Khmer, love to chit-chat). Each member have their own blog and will be able to post their writing to the whole community, or keep it to themselves and their friends. We have news feed from yahoo and google to keep us up to date on news about Cambodia. We have photos and videos that are from KhmerMix and from members who can upload them or embed videos that already upload to another video sharing sites, such as youtube. We even have an event calender to announce your Khmer related events to the world. Maybe you can get a few extra Khmer you haven’t already known yet to your party.

But one of the best part about KhmerMix.com is the video and voice chat that you can have with other members. Not even facebok or Myspace offers that. If you are Khmer, please help spread the words and gather our people up and head to KhmerMix.com and let the gathering of one of the world’s most history fill heritage come together in this new generation.

****To help promote KhmerMix.com please copy this blog post and post it on your blog or send it in an email to all your friends*****