Wednesday, September 10, 2008

#821 Niseko Art, Venezuela Signs, Global Voices, Crematorium Shortage


Show 821 Wednesday 10 September
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.


Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show.

On Monday I told you about the CD that we’re giving away on The Daily English Show this month: Super Simple Songs 3.
But that is not all, we also have something else to give away this month which is very cool. It is a set of postcards of a local artist here in Niseko whose work I really love.
His name is Miyamoto Ken (宮本健)and if you like art like this, then you’re really lucky to be able to have prints of his work – or even to see his work actually. He’s a fulltime artist and he lives in Niseko but he sells most of his work in Honshu and he only exhibits his work occasionally.
So I’m really happy he agreed to give away some of his postcards on the show because I wanted to share some of his beautiful work with the world. I’d love to have him as a guest too, but he’s a bit shy.
There are ten postcards in a set and I have five sets to give away, so I’ll send them to the first five people who email and say they want them. And you can check out this page if you’d like to find out more about tdes membership.



Wednesday Mistake


Today I have some English mistakes from Venezuela for us to look at. Thanks to Luis who sent these pictures of these signs and also suggestions for corrections.
This is the first one: In case of fire or earthquake do not use elevator, use the stairs.
Did you notice what the mistake was?
Yes, earthquake is spelt wrong. It should be spelt like this: earthquake.
Luis also suggested that it should be do not use the elevator, which is true if you’re saying it, but I think it's OK to leave out words like the for signs. Another place where it’s acceptable to leave out words like that is newspaper headlines.

For example, I saw this headline today: Jones suing movie-makers for $15m
If you were saying that you’d say: Jones is suing ...

This is the second sign. Please identify with security.
That sounds odd doesn’t it?
Luis suggestion is: Please identify yourself at security.
I think that sounds good. What do you think?



click here

The site I recommend today is called Global Voices.
It’s a media project that shines light on places and people other media often ignore.

This is from their site: At a time when the international English-language media ignores many things that are important to large numbers of the world’s citizens, Global Voices aims to redress some of the inequities in media attention by leveraging the power of citizens’ media.

I’ll give you an example of what they do. Today, I read an article called: Bloggers debate Uesugi's Collapse of Journalism.
This is a story from Japan. A journalist called Uesugi Takashi (上杉隆) has recently written a book called
The Collapse of Journalism (ジャーナリズム崩壊), and the writer of this article has picked up what a range of bloggers are saying about that book in Japanese. And she’s translated those bits of their blog posts into English. So, if you can’t understand Japanese you can still get an idea of the kind of discussion that’s going on the in the Japanese blogosphere about that book.



STICK NEWS

Kia Ora, in Stick News today Japan is facing a crematorium shortage.

The Associated Press has reported there is a shortage of crematoriums in Japan. They say the number of Japanese aged 65 or older hit a record 27 million in 2007, more than 21 percent of the population. And that percentage will nearly double in the next 30 years. The annual number of deaths is also rising. And most people who die in Japan are cremated so Japan needs more crematoriums. A city official in Nagoya says their crematorium is running at full capacity and they desperately need a new one. But they’re struggling to build a new crematorium due to “not-in-my-backyard” syndrome. An organization called the Nippon foundation has come up with the idea of building crematorium ships to burn bodies at sea. But officials are reportedly sceptical about the idea.

And that was Stick News for Wednesday the 10th of September.
Kia Ora.




conversations with sarah

#505 When did you first see his work?

Step 1: Repeat Jack’s lines.
Step 2: Read Jack’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Jack When did you first see his work?

Sarah Ages ago, actually, before I moved here.

Jack In Tokyo?

Sarah No, here, but it was when I was living in Tokyo. And I came here for the first time on holiday and I bought one of his postcards.

Jack Did you know him?

Sarah No, I just knew he was a local artist and I really liked his work, so I bought one of his postcards and then I put it on my wall in Tokyo so I looked at it every day.

Jack And then you met him when you moved here?

Sarah Yeah, it was nothing to do with art, it was through something else, but then I found out he was an artist and I was looking at his postcards and I was like – that’s my postcard!

Jack It’s a small world.



links

today's news

today's STICK NEWS pictures

music

show start
artist: Boom Tschak
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: More Chocolate, Please
from: Former Yugoslavia
MySpace

click here start
artist: #NarNaoud#
album: Green Vision
track: Oriental Standing
from: Gironde, France
artist at Jamendo
album at Jamendo
artist site

WOD start
artist: DJ iPep's
album: Home Mix 2007
track: Game Toy
from: EVREUX, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

cws start
artist: Wolfgang S.
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: Dynamite
from: Belgrade, Serbia, Former Yugoslavia
artist site
MySpace

qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

qa bgm
artist: Ensono
album: Night Culture
track: Waking Dream
from: Vigo, Spain
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo

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