English Recordings

The shortage of power in Africa means that, when the sun goes down, there is no relief from the darkness. But now the World Bank has plans to brighten up the gloom
When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb he vowed that electricity would be so cheap that only the rich would keep burning candles. Try telling that to today's residents of Africa, still making do with wax and wicks some 130 years later.
The Dark Continent nickname may have been coined by Edison's contemporary explorers, but in one respect the moniker is still accurate, as a quick glance at a night satellite photograph of the globe proves. While the lights of Europe and America twinkle brightly, Africa is swathed in a cloak of blackness.
In Sierra Leone, the UN war crimes court is praised as much for lighting up one area of the capital Freetown, as for its justice. In the dilapidated Guinean capital, Conakry, young men flock to the airport of an evening, perched on bollards to cram in after-dark exam revision in the one place with constant lighting. And in the desert expanses of eastern Chad, families gather together for a meal by moonlight.
Even in Africa's most cosmopolitan cities - Johannesburg, Nairobi and Dakar - where the electricity grid is well-established, power cuts are a common aggravation, with neighbourhoods suddenly plunged into darkness. To counteract this, the clatter of back-up generators has become a familiar soundtrack to life in the wealthier suburbs.
Development experts have long fretted about the knock-on effect that power shortages have on the continent's ability to haul itself out of poverty. Put in simple human terms, an estimated half a billion people do not have any electricity whatsoever.
"There is not enough time in the day to extend the electricity grid," says Russell Sturm, an energy expert for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector investment arm of the World Bank. "We need a more immediate solution."

Li: The maitre d' doesn't have a reservation for us.
Dana: Well, I made one, so they must not have written it down.

Josh: I called Talia, but she's not home.
Anya: I'm not sure, but she might have gone out with Nick.
Josh: Amy's not home either. Could she have gone with them?
Anya: I don't think so. Maybe she went to the library to study.
Josh: She might have. Her journalism midterm is next week.

Kim: Professor Roberts' class was canceled today.
Amy: Jackie must not have known about it. She went to class.
Kim: Professor Howard wasn't at work yesterday either. I wonder if both Professors are sick.
Amy: They could have been. Professor Howard's been looking kind of tired.

Cindi: Hi. I think we met at Josh's party.
Omar: We couldn't have. I didn't go to that party. But I'm sure we've met somewhere.
Cindi: Could Amy have introduced us?
Omar: She might have. I run into her a lot on campus.

(December 24, 2012)
The following entry is from my Chinese entry from yesterday. Now I`m trying to rewrite it in English as well. Thanks for reading and correcting. ~ Merry Christmas, Everyone! Here in Seoul it snowed all night long last night! It was a white Christmas! ~~~

(December 23, 2012)Canceling Credit Cards and Rescind/ Revoke Cancelling Cards

Winter vacation began last Friday./Winter vacation started from last Friday./ That evening, I found the fact that I had lost my wallet at a cafe and I immediately called the/my banks and cancelled all of my credit cards. Fortunately/, Luckily,/ I found my wallet at that cafe three days ago, so now I have to stop the cancellation of my cards.
I can request that a credit card be canceled over the phone, but I have to go to the banks myself when I want to rescind/revoke a request to cancel a card. So, I`d should go out right now!
Because I have no money at all.

<Practising English by Describing Pictures: A Wine Glass and an Empty Dish >This wine glass was mine at dinner tonight.
My son and husband went out and bought fresh slices of raw fish for us to have for dinner. As you can see, there are not any slices left in the picture. All that remains are some shredded radish(es) and lemon slices. We eat raw fish slices by dipping them in hot pepper paste or soy bean paste sauce.Sweet dreams!

--<Dictionary and Sample Sentences>-----
[정지]
Cancel my credit card, please.
신용카드를 정지시켜 주세요.

They had their credit cards cancelled.
그들은 신용카드를 정지시켰다.

Well, what I suggest you do, sir, is call your bank and credit card company immediately and cancel the cards.
그렇다면 지금 즉시 은행과 신용카드 회사에 전화해서 카드를 정지하세요.

-[겨울 방학 시작]-
The winter vacation will begin soon!
조금 있으면 겨울 방학이 시작될 거야!

Winter vacation has just begun!
막 겨울 방학이 시작되었단다!

This month, the winter vacation begins, too.
이번 달에 겨울 방학이 시작됩니다.

He left one week before winter vacation started.
그는 겨울방학이 시작되기 1주일 전에 떠났다.

--[잃다.]--
I lost my wallet that my dad had bought last year.
나는 아버지가 작년에 사주신 지갑을 잃어버렸다.

I lost my wallet while I was in the store.
난 가게에 있을 때 지갑을 잃어버렸어요. '

I think I lost my wallet.
지갑이 없어졌어요.

I can't believe I lost my wallet.
내 지갑을 잃어버렸다니 믿을 수 없어요.

I don't know when I lost my wallet.
언제 지갑을 잃어버렸는지 모르겠다.

I spilled coffee on my blouse, lost my wallet, and had a flat tire.
난 블라우스에 커피 쏟고 내 지갑 잃어버리고 타이어에 펑크도 났어요.

No, I lost my passport and wallet.
아닙니다. 여권과 지갑을 잃어버려서요.

I found that I had lost my wallet.
나는 지갑을 잃어버렸다는 것을 알게 되었다.

I keep extra credit card in the hotel safe just in case my wallet is lost or stolen. 지갑을 잃어버리거나 도난당할 경우를 대비해서 호텔 금고에 여분의 신용카드를 보관해 두고 있습니다.

--[다행히]--

다행히 도중에서 그를 만났다
Luckily, I met him on the way.

다행히 빚을 모두 갚을 수 있었다.
Luckily, I was able to repay my loan completely.

다행히 내일은 일요일이다
Fortunately, it is Sunday tomorrow.

다행히 비가 개었다
Luckily, it stopped raining.

다행히 우리는 모두 잘 있습니다
Happily we are all well.

다행히도 그와 아는 처지였다
Fortunately I happened to know him.

다행히도 나는 늘 건강하다
Fortunately I am always healthy.／I am always blessed with good health.

Thank you for listening my audio file.
My nickname is ginger.
I have been studying English since September 3th,2012.

It has been three months since I began studying English.

I love English.

English pronunciation is difficult. But it is fun.

I want to live in America.

Regarding pronunciation , tell me if they are strange.

===

I practice how to use "have". I have met Kyohei Sakaguchi.

We talked for 30 to 40 minutes.

He's sweet, funny and smart.

===

In this post, I am going to practice using "have". I haven't
been to America.

How long has Ginger been living in Saitama?

I've been living in Saitama for 12 years.

==

I practice interrogatives. How tall is Ginger?

I'm 164cm tall.

What's Ginger's weight?

It's a secret.

===

In this post, I am going to practice using "have".
I haven't seen Takuya Kimura.

I have talked to Hideaki Tokunaga.

What is he like?

He is really funny.

＝＝＝

I entered an English conversation school using Skype a while ago.

I talk to a teacher for 50 minutes every day.

It is fun!

A video call on Skype is very good.

I mostly do video calls with no make up.

However this school teacher is really kind every time.

I appreciate it.

I want to have more English every day☆

'We need "sustainability literacy", enabling people to see what the costs of living in a certain way really look like. We're blind to a lot of that. When people take holidays in far-flung places they very rarely think about the impact of hundreds of thousands of tourists descending on some destination somewhere in the world. We've just got to get wiser to what happens when we enjoy the perks of this life.'
His sentiments were echoed by the conservation group Friends of the Earth. Tony Juniper, its director, said: 'Our consumer culture is completely out of the step with the capacity of the planet. If we're going to have a world that is in a fit state to live in by the end of the century, we're going to have to drastically reduce the amount of material demand.
'We need a legal framework for economic activity, but in the end this is about culture, and culture shapes politics. At the moment the culture is being shaped in an unsustainable direction by the advertising industry. It's perfectly possible to present an alternative, but no one has the budget: Friends of the Earth has a few thousand pounds, whereas millions are spent to promote a single car.'
Trevor Datson, a spokesman for Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, insisted it shares many of Porritt's values. 'There's no question there's too much waste in society, and we'd agree with Jonathon there. The thrust of Tesco's moves on the environment is helping customers choose a greener lifestyle. Our carrier bag scheme is designed to incentivise rather than castigate: we've saved 350 million plastic bags since last July by offering club card points for people who re-use bags. It's the power of making people feel good about green choices rather than having to live like a monk.'

'I've always been very nervous about this implied assumption that the more you put on your credit card, the more your charities will benefit, which is a bit perverse, but is what happens when you're using credit cards of that kind,' Porritt said. 'I think it clutters up the awareness we need to encourage in people now that there's an awful lot of unnecessary consumption, conspicuous consumption, irresponsible consumption, and we're just got to get used to cracking down on that in our own lives and really thinking through the implications of all that.'
Red officials argue that their campaign is not about buying more but about buying differently. They say that is about buying an 'ethical' version of a product rather than a 'non-ethical' one. But Porritt argues that there is not only a need to shop differently, but to shop less. 'I don't subscribe to this view that all we need to do is consume a little more thoughtfully, a little bit less damagingly. When I look at the amount of consumption that almost instantly turns into waste, with huge amounts bought for no particularly good purpose and then discarded or thrown away, I do find it inexcusable. When some people are buying food they're not buying for a particular meal, they're not thinking it through very carefully, they're almost buying speculatively as if, "Well, we might eat that this week, if we don't we'll chuck it away." I find that extraordinary. I'm not being a miserable, parsimonious, old tightwad, it's just why would you buy stuff that's not needed?'
He denies that he is advocating a return to the austerity and rationing last seen during and just after the Second World War, although he describes low air fares as 'ludicrous' and warns a sacrifice will have to be made to reduce carbon emissions. 'I know for sure that if we ever had a golden age, as far as most people are concerned, it's been over the last 50 years. That's the period of the greatest prosperity for the greatest number of people, so I don't have any nostalgia for past eras where life was simpler but more primitive. I don't talk about going back to anything, I talk about using technology a great deal more intelligently and efficiently to continue to give us a very high quality of life with a fraction of the environmental cost.

Porritt's film cites China as an example of how booming economic growth has produced an explosion of consumerism with mixed results: millions have risen out of poverty, but the consequences for the environment are severe. He added: 'There's always been a more privileged part of society which was into buying more than they needed in order to demonstrate how wealthy and influential they were, but the benefits of mass consumption have now been spread so wide that we've got anywhere between 1.5 and two billion people on the planet today who can use their purchasing power like that. The total spend on advertising is just so enormous now that it's little wonder people are seduced into this idea that their personal happiness results from spending in the way they're being encouraged to do.'
There are some pockets of resistance. 'Froogles' include New Yorker Judith Levine who, realising that she had spent $1,000 (£500) in the run-up to Christmas in 2004, decided to buy nothing but necessities for the next year, chronicling the experience in her book, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping
A group called The Compact, made up of 10 friends in San Francisco, gained members around the world: their mission, to take a '12-month flight from the consumer grid' and boycott all non-essential products. Every year, in November, Buy Nothing Day encourages people to 'shop less - live more', and last year there were multiple events in Manchester and Oxford and at least six other British cities. Meanwhile, websites such as Freecycle.org enable users to exchange unwanted goods and preventing them going to waste.
February saw the launch of Buy (Less), whose website parodies RED, the global fundraising campaign led by U2 singer Bono which tells consumers that when they buy RED branded products -which include clothes, a credit card and mobile phone - a slice of the money will be used to fight Aids in Africa. Buy (Less) Crap challenges the concept, urging its visitors to 'join us in rejecting the ti(red) notion that shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering'. It provides weblinks to several charities so that people can make direct donations instead.

In a film for Channel Five, he points out that Britons throw away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks, with 100 million tonnes of waste pouring into the country's 12,000 landfill sites every year. If all six billion people in the world were to consume at the same level, we would need two new Earths to supply all the energy, soil, water and raw materials required.
'I think capitalism is patently unable to go on growing the size of the consumer economy for any more people in the world today because levels of consumption are already undermining life support systems on which we depend - so if we do it for any more people, the planet will go pop,' Porritt told The Observer. 'So in a way we don't have a choice about this: we've got to rethink the basic premise behind capitalism to make it deliver the goods. In the long run, when you really look at what happens on a planet with nine billion people and really serious constraints on the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that we can emit, it's almost inevitable we will learn to have more elegant, satisfying lives, consuming less. I can't see any way out of that in the long run.'
Porritt, co-founder of Forum For The Future, Britain's leading sustainable development charity, believes that consumerism has taken over our lives almost unnoticed. 'Shopping has become a recreational activity,' he continued. 'There's a lot of evidence that people really do see shopping now as an amenity pastime. We're well beyond the time where shopping was just a way of transacting what you needed in life. It's now all about identity and status and recreation and companionship, even about meaning in people's lives. There's always been a "keeping up with the Joneses" type thing, but it's now almost universalised and there is a sense of buying to be more like something or to get the image of somebody, particularly with clothes or branded goods, where there's very much that sense of, "If I buy something with this name on it, maybe a little bit of the magic of that name will rub off on me and I'll be a better person", whereas we all know you're exactly the same person just waiting to go out and make your next branded purchase.'