Locky's English Playground

Monday, 6 June 2011

Event: Dragon Boat Festival 2011

Dragon boat racing is held to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival (also known as Tuen Ng Festival) and is one of the most exciting sports you will ever see in Hong Kong. It is immensely popular in Hong Kong and attracts teams from all walks of life, including traditional fishermen. The races are held every year at locations throughout Hong Kong.The main races will be held on the Tuen Ng Festival day, which falls on 6 June (Monday) this year. Join the locals for a day at the races and you’ll see why this is a must attend event.

2011 Local Dragon Boat Races

>>Local Dragon Boat Races Schedule (May – June 2011)

Hong Kong Dragon Boat Carnival

A summer visit to Hong Kong must include a trip to the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Carnival. It's a rocking three-day party with hot live entertainment and a cool beer garden. Watch as international teams in their magnificent sleek crafts compete in the International Dragon Boat Races in Victoria Harbour.

Date:

17 - 19 June 2011

Time:

Sa Sa 2011 Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Races

Date/Time: 1pm - 6pm, 17 June 2011;

8:30am - 6pm, 18 – 19 June 2011

Venue: Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade

San Miguel Beer Garden

Date/Time: 1pm – 9:30pm, 17 – 19 June 2011

Venue: UC Centenary Garden, East Tsim Sha Tsui

Resources:

Dragon Boat Racing in Hong Kong @ Discover Hong Kong

http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/events/sports-dragon-boat-race.html

Friday, 3 June 2011

Message: Locky's English Playground Supports WWF World's Ocean Day

Resources:
WWF Hong Kong
http://www.wwf.org.hk/reslib/ecard/

Culture: Italian Popular Gestures

Image from designyoutrust.com

Learning a language is not enough to simply learn the words, one must learn about the culture in order to be truly masterful in the language.

You might not be interested in Italian, but here I take Italian as an example, because in Italy, using gestures (i gesti) is as important as using spoken words. From the above image, you can see the importance of gestures in the Italian way of non-verbal communications.

Interestingly, in football, there are also lots of gestures. Below I have included some photos, see if you can figure out what they mean.

"Please!!!!" by Christian Vieri
Image from cultureofsoccer.com

"Louder!" by Roberto Baggio
Image from Comenius

"You are no good!" by Francesco Totti
Image from static.guim.co.uk

"I don't care!" by Luca Toni
Image from fifa.com

Okay, let's see some videos:

Have fun learning!

Resources:
Italian Hand Gestures PART 1 @ YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0n4Vw6twKo

Italian Hand Gestures & Expressions PART 2 @ YouTube
http://youtu.be/HYFlBGeYygI

Thursday, 2 June 2011

Song: Please, let the dolphins go

Taken from The Cove @ Facebook, needless to say, ""Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", please save the dolphins... Visit www.saddestdolphns.com and sign the petition!!!!

Ric and the Dolphin Project team have partnered with Animal Concerns Rescue & Education Society to protest the capture of 25 wild dolphins by Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore. Two of the dolphins have already died. Watch the below video and sign the petition at www.saddestdolphins.com.

Resources:
The Cove @ Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/TheCove

Proverbs & Idioms: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" & "A bad workman blames his tools" @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.com/2011/06/idioms-bad-workman-blames-his-tools.html

Proverbs & Idioms: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" & "A bad workman blames his tools"

Today, I want to talk about a few interesting sayings and proverbs. They are interesting as there are similar versions in Chinese.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Image from hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net

One of them we use if we want to say , in Chinese, it is "if oneself doesn't want to be treated in a certain way, then don't treat others with in the same way", or "not treating others as one would not like to be treated oneself." These words of wisdoms are from no other than Chinese philosopher, Confucius. In English, the same saying is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Image from images.travelpod.com

Definitely suits the recent cancer-causing plastic additive DEHP case from Taiwan.

Another interesting one is a proverb in English, "A bad workman (always) blames his tools", an equivalent Chinese proverb would be "One fails to defecate / poop blames the hard ground", meaning making bad or lame excuses for failure to accomplish something.

Hypothetical situation,

Person 1: "Locky didn't update his blog on Wednesday and he claims that it was Google's problem, AGAIN!!!"
Person 2: "He's just a bad workman who blames his tools!"

Can you think of other good examples?

Vocabulary:

A bad workman (always) blames his tools -- UK saying said when someone has blamed a mistake or failure on the things that they use for their work
defecate -- [I] formal to pass the contents of the bowels out of the body
lame -- (adj) (especially of an excuse or argument) weak and unsatisfactory
hypothetical -- (adj) imagined or suggested but not necessarily real or true
Resources:

The Golden Rule @ Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule

Confucius @ Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius

Chow gives plastic assurance @ The Standard
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=11&art_id=111701&sid=32582001&con_type=1&d_str=20110602&fc=7

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/a-bad-workman-blames-his-tools
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/defecate?q=defecate+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/lame_2
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/hypothetical?q=Hypothetical+

Monday, 30 May 2011

Movie & Event: Short Circuit 2 & Happy 25th, 'Short Circuit!'

Image from johnny-five.com

Well, talking about what I planned to post much much earlier, was the 25th birthday of Johnny 5, the robot which came to live on the 9th May 1986 giving kids hopes and dreams.

Number 5 from Short Circuit

I'm really glad to see that there is still a website for him, called johnny-five.com, some photos of him and some behind-the-scene photos of his movie, a forum for his fans to exchange thoughts and their own version of toy Johnny 5, and a Photobucket collection of his photos, and a museum called Robothut which keeps a reproduced version of Johnny 5 in it. I hope that some day soon we will see Johnny 5 again in the cinema, with 3D IMAX would be nice!!

Today, I would like to recommend the sequel of Short Circuit, if you still haven't seen the first one, I think you can consider getting DVD or Blu-ray now.

Image from farm3.static.flickr.com

At the beginning of this movie, it seems like it simply talks about Johnny Five visiting New York and is attracted by many new things around him, as the movie proceeds, he went the wrong direction and made some indecent friends, learnt some indecent street tricks because he wants to mix with the people, but still found himself different and lonely. The first movie (Short Circuit) addresses the problems faced by a baby boy who first came to this world as a gift from God and the second movie (Short Circuit 2) actually goes to address the deeper meanings of the problems faced by a little boy or a teenager, and how Johnny Five eventually learns the difference between good and bad.

If you are parents, you are highly recommended to show these two excellent movies to your children!!

The inventor of Number 5, Ben Jahrvi, now trying to earn a living making toy robots, has Number 5 as his one-man assembly line. Number 5, however, has a hard time resisting the temptation to have "more input" out on the street.

Johnny 5 from Short Circuit 2

Color me surprised. Given its age and, well, genre—live action 1980s kid flicks don't always get the best high definition treatments—Short Circuit 2 looks fantastic on Blu-ray, miles better than it ever looked on DVD.

Working off a nearly pristine print—there are only a few scattered white specks, and no major scratches or debris—Image Entertainment has assembled a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's consistently sharp and colorful. It doesn't appear that Image has tampered at all with the source material; grain is natural, DNR and edge enhancement are absent, and the image hasn't been boosted or altered in any significant way.

No tampering is necessary. A few soft shots aside, the picture is surprisingly crisp. The back streets of Toronto— standing in for New York—are revealed in all their grimy, graffiti-covered glory, and the actors' faces and clothing all display discernable textures.

Better yet is Johnny 5 himself, whose mechanical workings are rendered with satisfyingly fine detail. The film goes for a realistic, unstylized palette, with balanced skin tones, sufficiently deep black levels, and frequent splashes of vivid spray paint color. Finally, although the film sits on a single-layer Blu-ray disc, I didn't discern any apparent compression issues.

This is definitely the best the film has ever, and perhaps will ever look.

Toy Johnny 5 from Short Circuit 2

While it's unfortunate that the film couldn't have been given a full 5.1 presentation—there are, after all, sequences in Short Circuit 2 that practically call out for city street ambience and swooshing cross-channel effects—I have no real qualms with this disc's uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo track.

Sure, some of the effects lack punch and there's little separation between the left and right channels, but there's really nothing wrong with this capable, if understated mix.

The most prevalent element is probably David Shire's bouncy, stereotypically 1980s score—complete with popping slap bass straight out of the Seinfeld theme—and the music sounds as clear and dynamic as can be expected.

Likewise, the front-anchored mix does what it can with the film's action scenes, and while there's little low-end presence, I can at least say the mix doesn't sound tinny, mid-heavy, muffled, or clipped.

Throughout the film, dialogue is always well-balanced and easy to understand. The disc comes with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, but the white-lettered subs are somewhat unnecessarily contained in black text boxes.

Opinions:
There are just too many important things, people or characters that make up my life, and Johnny Five is definitely one of them. Watching its movie once in a while is like seeing an long-missed childhood friend healthy and energetic, makes me feel warm and comfortable. Johnny Five always touches my heart as being a robot that everyone wants to be friends with. Johnny Five is also voted as the 10th of the Top 10 Greatest Robots in Movies, but I actually think he should be the number 1, because no other robots has the facial expressions and emotions that Johnny Five has.

Image from johnny-five.com

Long live Johnny Five! I miss you!!!

Vocabulary:

pristine -- (adj) formal approving new or almost new, and in very good condition

scattered -- (adj) covering a wide area

speck -- (n)[C] a very small mark, piece or amount

scratch -- (n) [C] a mark made by scratching

debris -- (n)[U] broken or torn pieces of something larger

tamper (with sth) -- phrasal verb to touch or make changes to something which you should not, usually without enough knowledge of how it works or when you are trying to damage it

crisp -- (adj0 mainly approving describes sound or an image that is very clear

grimy -- (adj) dirty

graffiti -- (n)[U] plural noun words or drawings, especially humorous, rude or political, on walls, doors, etc. in public places

discernable -- (adj) formal able to be seen or understood

render -- (vb)[T] formal to cause someone or something to be in a particular state

unstylized -- (adj) If something is stylized, it is represented with an emphasis on a particular style, especially a style in which there are only a few simple details.

palette -- (n)[C] [C usually singular] specialized the range of colours that an artist usually paints with

swoosh -- (vb) [I] informal to make the sound of air or water that is moving quickly

qualm -- (n) [C usually plural] an uncomfortable feeling of doubt about whether you are doing the right thing

punch -- (n) [U] [U] the power to be interesting and have a strong effect on people

prevalent -- (adj) existing very commonly or happening often

bouncy -- (adj) happy and energetic

tinny -- (adj) describes a sound which is of low quality or like metal being hit

muffled -- (adj) describes a sound that is quiet or not clear

clipped -- (adj) with words pronounced quickly and sharply, sometimes with parts missing, or in a very short and unfriendly way

Resources:

Johnny Five.com

http://johnny-five.com/

milwaukeemachineman's album @ Photobucket
http://s125.photobucket.com/albums/p75/milwaukeemachineman/

Robot Hut
http://www.robothut.robotnut.com/rj5p1.html

This Week in Movies: Cute Robots, Drunken Bridesmaids and Rampant Vampires @ Moviefone
http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/05/12/this-week-in-movies-bridesmaids-priest-short-circuit/

Movie: Short Circuit @ Locky's English Playground

http://lockyep.blogspot.com/2011/03/movie-short-circuit.html

Short Circuit 2 Trailer @ YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6VVELKyhOg

Short Circuit 2 Blu-ray @ Blu-ray.com

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Short-Circuit-2-Blu-ray/19346/

A VISIT TO OTSUCHI, DEVASTATED BY THE TSUNAMI @ Save Japan Dolphins