Children Don’t Belong to Cram School

A Magical Way of Losing Weight-"Han Tian"

CONTENTS

Executive EditorAiden Yeh

DesignerIrwandi Indra

Image ConsultantChester Chou

Penny Li

1

LOHAS: A Lifestyle or a Consumption Fashion?

Tattoo Fashion

Children Don’t Belong to Cram School

How Facebook Changes the World

A Magical Way of Losing Weight-"Han Tian"

The Fashion-Blog

Losing Weight

Polo Shirt Fashion

Karaoke(KTV)

Contact Lenses

MP3 Player Around The World

By Lisa Chang

By Steven Lin

By Chester Chou

By Irwandi Indra

By Sunny Chen

By Ada Ma

By Robbie Houang

By Apollo

By Rachel Yang

By Joyce Wen

By Zoe Hsieh

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3

5

7

9

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15

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A Lifestyle or A Consumption

Fashion?Not knowing the exact threshold of this

trend in Taiwan in the early 2000s, the LOHAS concept has been prevailing over the island in a rather short period

of time. With all the products and services propagating their ecological initiatives, it appears that Taiwanese catch up with the tenor of the world as we start to be attentive to our health and the sustainability of our environment. However, I see this with the suspicion that we might only touch the very shallow degree of this renewed lifestyle.

LOHAS stands for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability; it is a reactionary movement against the consumer-oriented culture in an afflu-ent society. Originated with the people of Boulder city, Colorado, USA, it pays close attention to the global environmental problems and advocates a healthy and self-sufficient way of life. What LO-HAS covers could be extensively large, including sustainable economy such as green buildings and recyclable source, healthy lifestyle with organic and local grown food or nutritional supplement,

LOHAS

3

with the upscale and well-educated population segment, with it merely a slogan to attract atten-tion. Meanwhile, today’s Taiwanese LOHAS group is more concentrating on individualism. They chiefly concern about personal health rather than the ex-tended environmental predicament. While people of other countries view LOHAS as a holistic concept and work on it in full scale, we halt in a relatively early phase as regarding it a consumption fashion to follow. In other words, a lot more efforts are needed to be put into action to reach the ultimate pursuit of sustainable living in Taiwan’s society. Understanding the nature of LOHAS and the knot that we are having right now, it is in-deed simple to practice a healthy and sustain-able life. With a strong preference of things better for the environment and human beings, people go back to the basics of life while cutting down unnecessary expenses. So why not simpli-fy your life starting today? Maybe tomorrow we will make Taiwanese LOHAS worthy of its name.

A Lifestyle or A Consumption

Fashion?alternative therapy as naturopathy, personal evolution as yoga and psycho-spiritual inte-gration, and ecological life with second hand stuff, natural household products, energy effi-cient electronics, and ecotourism trips. The de-fining characteristic of the LOHAS group is that they make up their consumption choices based on the quality of the products that are bet-ter for the personal health and environment.

There is no denying that LOHAS is an ad-vantageous trend of revolutionary lifestyle and value to the world today, though I doubt whether we do absorb the essence of the LOHAS concep-tion into our life or we simply have it a disguise for the yuppie fashion. In Taiwan, the products of those shops which appeal to LOHAS ideas are mostly costly. Take MUJI for example, with their founding spirit of natural and simple design, they mold their brand with a cultivated taste to cater for upscale population. Although they sell products of LOHAS style, they indeed amplify the consumption orienta-tion to a deeper level. Thus the LOHAS group stays

LOHAS

by Lisa Chang

4

Graphic Source :http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs11/i/2006/230/6/b/Tattoo_by_CheekyVampire.jpg

When we talk about body fashion or body art, tattoo is always the first item that comes to our mind. Al-

though it is a new fashion among people, I still think having a tattoo done is painful and it chang-es the way of how people look at you. Nowa-days, people getting a tattoo in order to cre-ate their own uniqueness and build attraction.

Before, tattoo can only be found on those aboriginals. They use tattoos to present special so-cial status or particular meanings. The tools they have used to getting a tattoo done was simply using a hammer and a stick with nails attached and moistened the nails with ink which made from charcoal, then beating the stick on the face. But as the tattoo culture got popular at American, many celebrities used to get a tattoo as well. People in Taiwan started to think getting tattoo as a fashion trend and the tools was much more developed. Today, the modern tattoo machine is primarily a motor attached to a tube that contains a bar with a needle arrangement on the end. The mo-tor pushes the needle up and down with a very fast speed and the ink stays on people’s skin.

No matter how advanced the tattoo ma-chine is, getting a tattoo done is still painful. And I am the kind of person who can not toler-ate pain, especially with needles. I also think tat-too affects people’s judgements about you. If a person who tries to get a job about teacher, lawyer, or a salesperson, without covering their tattoos, I think the chances for them to get these jobs are really less. Because in Taiwan people are still having the stereotype of tattoo, which is that only gangsters are willing to having tattoos. As more and more people in Taiwan are having tattoos, I still think having a tattoo as a troublesome fashion. Although there is a technic which can remove the tattoo, it is not as easy as taking an earring off. You can still see some ob-scure colors stay on your skin. Therefore, I think tattoo is a fashion that only maintain for a very short time, but influences the rest of my life. Be-cause fashion always keeping changing, but you can not change tattoo every time you want.

by Steven Lin

FashionTattoo

6

Children don’t belong to

cram schoolChinese parents believe that learning

should have a good start. Therefore, they ask their children to learn in cram schools even when they are still little.

However, they have never known how much pres-sure their children will have at cram schools. Learn-ing is great, but I don't think this trend of learning in cram schools filled with stress is the right way. Based on the law issued in 2006, cram schools should be closed for children below six years old. Knowing that sending their children to the cram schools will be against the law, parents still want their children to learn as early as possible. How come they still try to find cram schools which are proper for their children? I think it is because of the mindset of Chinese parents. They think that

learning early is a guarantee for parents. Peo-ple assert that the earlier children start to learn, the more knowledge they can get in cram school. And also, the higher education children can get, the more opportunities they will have in the future.

Undoubtedly, parents love their children. But loving them in a wrong way becomes an extreme burden for their children. Take my miserable child-hood for example. With high expectations, my par-ents paid the tuition and forced me to go to many cram schools. Nonetheless, I could hardly find the interest and joy of learning. Instead, I felt that I was tortured by the instruction there. Teachers at cram school just cram knowledge into my little brain by continual quizzes and punishment. I did recite the

Graphic Source :http://www.deviantart.com/download/89630070/Cram_time_XD_by_vegietard.jpg

context the teachers taught. However, even though I learned a lot at that time, I don't think my child-hood should not have been miserable. As an inno-cent and curious child, I preferred to discover this world step by step on my own. What my parents should have done to me was to encourage and guide me when I encountered some obstacles. In my opinion, the most precious part of learning is not how perfect children can do on the tests but its process. Having experienced the tough life at cram schools, I will let my children learn whatever they want instead of being tortured in the cram schools.

don’t belong tocram school

The tendency of going to cram schools becomes more and more popular in our soci-ety. However, before you tend to send them to cram schools, think about the love you'd like to contribute to your children, and you will know why they don't belong to cram schools.

by Chester Chou

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the World

How

Changes

Nowadays, as with the increasing pro-gression of internet connection, the de-velopments of social networking web-

sites are becoming so popular. Facebook is one of the fastest-growing and the best-known so-cial networking website throughout the world. Based on The Facebook Press Room’s statis-tic published in 2009, the active users of Face-book reached the number of 200 million and more than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day. It seems that Facebook has become a trend for all ages in the world.

According to Wikipedia article’s, Facebook is a free-access social networking website which

is founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerber while he was a student at Harvard University. Like other social networks, the site allows the users to cre-ate a profile page and connect online links with friends. Moreover, the user can also add friends, update their personal profiles, send messages, upload photos and videos, etc. The user of Face-book not only for the teenagers and adults, even the government official also use Facebook for the election campaign. Since the 44th President of United States of America, Barrack Obama start-ed using Facebook, many Indonesian government officials also signed-up and started their political campaigns. So, it is becoming easier to find infor-mation about different political parties' agendas.

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the World Facebook is the first website that I always visit to check new updates. I can probably be con-sidered as a Facebook fan. In the past, I used oth-er social networking sites, such as Friendster and MySpace. However, since I signed up in Facebook, I found that it is more practical to help me search and to link directly to my friends. As a result, I’ve met my childhood friends whom I haven’t met for many years. I just can simply chat with them by us-ing the chat tool which is provided on that website. Moreover, Facebook has a lot of features, such as, games, gifts, birthday reminder, etc. So, it is convenient to do many things just in one website. So for these reasons, I will suggest to all of my friends and relatives to have a Facebook account.

No doubt, Facebook is a 'cool' so-cial network website that I’ve ever used. It is very possible that in the future everyone in the world will be connected via Facebook.

by Irwandi Indra

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As we know, more and more people care about their health and pay more attention to what they eat. However, staying healthy

isn't the only thing that people are concerned about. What is more important for them is to be slender and to have a good body shape just like the TV stars or movie stars. Since everyone wants to be attractive to others and look more beauti-ful, they are interested in various ways of losing weight, especially women. It is even said that "Be-ing beautiful is women's natural instincts", or "There is no fat women, but only lazy women". From these two sayings we can clearly know that the trend of losing weight has a lot to do with women.Among all the ways of losing weight on the market now, Han Tian is seemed to be the most popular and effec-tive one.This is no doubt a new trend in Taiwan now.

This popular food originates from Japan.Most people don't eat it directly because it is taste-less and masticated like plastic object. Moreover, there are no calories in it. Nowadays, there is a lot of food which contains han tian. The main reason why it became a popular food for losing weight is that han tian can make you feel full after you eat it. In other words, it is just like a filler in stomach and does no harm to our body. Doesn't it sound magi-cal? Many people are crazy about it and consid-ered it a necessity when they are going on a diet.

It seems that any products will be very popular with the costumers when they have han tian to be in the product's name. From drinks to foods, it is not hard to find out the words "han tian". In my opinion, it is just like a storm which hit Taiwanese market se-riously. Even my friends around me all have great interests in it. They strongly believe that eating han tian can be very effective for losing weight. They even try every kind of han tian food in order to test whether it is useful or not. However, it is hard to describe the charm and influence of han tian.

To sum up, han tian is no doubt a new trend for losing weight. As for me, I am not so sure wheth-er han tian can be useful or not, because I haven't tried it yet. However, from my point of view, I still consider the healthy and natural ways the most useful way of losing weight.For example, exercis-ing or balanced diet. The main reason is that I am convinced that it is not so good for us to eat the same thing all the time for losing weight. We still need the balanced diet to keep healthy.Although eating han tian is a new trend of losing weight, we still have to find out what is the best way for us to lose weight. After all, being healthy should be the first thing that we should be concerned about.

"Han Tian"

A MagicalWay of Losing

Weight

by Sunny Chen

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Graphic Source : http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs12/i/2006/281/6/7/Diet_by_Inkkie.jpg

Do you want to be the special one to walk in the fashion peak of the world? Now you don’t have to do

cosmetic surgery or pay for body-sculp-ture or facial treatment to show that you are in fashion. Most of the courses about the beauty treatments for the face or body is expensive and cosmetic surgery indeed has risks. Now you have a new chance to catch on the latest fashion. From top to bottom, inside and out- all you need is to have a personal blog on the Internet. Fashion can be anything and ev-erything in our life if only we make our-selves in a fashionable mood. Blog, I think has brought a trend in our daily life. Its origin is Weblog. Web means Inter-net. Log means to record. After a period of development the Weblog has become the meaning of Internet diary. I know many people in Taiwan including me go to the Wretch a BlogSpot to register and become one of the users of Wretch. They use the Internet to keep a diary online/blog to record their life. Besides, some people share their experiences on their blog. For example, there are some blog-gers write wonderful experiences of their travel and give some advices to those who want to travel alone to the countries they had traveled. A blog is a great medium that we can get the information from.

I think to have a blog is quite interesting and convenient. Blog has become a way to get in touch and catch up with others. Using the Inter-net to keep our daily life does not

The FashionBlogonly saves time but has more security you don't need to worry about losing what you wrote. You can write whatever you want to say as long as it does not violate the code of ethic and against the laws. As for me I’m also one of the users of Wretch. I sometimes write on my blog so my friends can follow me by reading my blog on the Internet. Besides, I’m always following the blogs of my senior high and ju-nior high schools’ friends so my friends. I also use a technique called RSS (Really Simple Syn-dication or Rich Site Summary) to subscribe to others blog and when they update their blog you can get the message about their updates and follow them. For instance, an Internet writ-er called Wan Wan; she is good at drawing, and she uses a software program to draw the events in her life. She puts the drawings on her own blog and share her own funny trifles to others. Because of her cute drawings and the interesting technique of writing, more than one thousand people visit her blog everyday and many of them subscribe to her blog. As I said she is an Internet writer, recently she gathered her drawing and all the work she placed on her and published many books; she earned her first million in her life just because of a Blog.

Are you ready to have yourown blog? Keep a diary, share experiences or earn the first million for yourself? Walking in the fashion peak of the world isn’t too far to reach. Es-tablish your blog and create your own fashion.You can be the next fashion guru millionaire!

by Ada Ma

12Graphic Source :http://www.deviantart.com/download/102481417/Freiwort_Blog_Design_by_plantanium.jpg

digestion and metabolism. In addition to keeping shape, taking exercise can help you to make more friends who also tend to be slim. By the way, swim-ming is regarded as the most effective way to lose weight. Even if you just stride in water for half an hour, it will still take many calories from your body. In my opinion, it's not so difficult to keep our shape ideally. It only takes determinations and at-titude, and if you face your body optimistically, it won't be a problem to have your own perfect figure.

People always can't resist the lure of tasty food. Despite of the high calo-ries, we're easy to ignore the risk of be-

ing obese. And according to the medical reports, it's healthier to control your weight; hence go-ing on a diet has become a trend in the world.

trying to decrease their weight by eating nothing butdrink water. It is not only fruitless but also danger-ous. For example, the Carpenters in 1990s were once the most famous band in America. Unfortu-nately, the singer passed away because of eating nothing. From the death of the singer, we have to notice that diet is for our health but not for beauty.

We're able to control our weight in many ways like eating more vegetables and fruit instead of meat. However, nowadays there are many peo-ple trying to decrease their weight by eating noth-ing but drink water. It is not only fruitless but also dangerous. For example, the Carpenters in 1990s were once the most famous band in America. Unfor-tunately, the singer passed away because of eating nothing. From the death of the singer, we have to notice that diet is for our health but not for beauty. Instead of the dietary way, sport must be the best method to lose fat. Based on the medi-cal report, taking exercise frequently is good for

We’re able to control our weight in many ways like eating more vegetables and fruit instead of meat. However, nowadays there are many people

by Robbie Houang

LosingWeight

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Polo shirts are popular in today’s mar-ket. We can find that the age of wear-ing polo shirt can be between 5 years old

to 65 years old. That means it is appropriate to all ages. When we walk on the street, the polo shirt would be seen in any corner and any kind of people. It is now indeed a public shirt.

Polo shirts were first created in th 1900s. According to Wiki, it was René Lacoste, a French tennis champion, who designed it and made it to become a symbol of sport shirt. Now we all know about Lacoste, and when we talk about Lacoste, people think of polo shirts. It is now a trend for young people. It indicates an informal but youth-ful and sunny vigor. Young people match it with jeans, office workers might wear it with a suit trouser, and also sports men wear it with slacks.

For us, college students, polo shirt is a requisite. In the university, most people would like to be admired. Therefore, seeking the trend is an important thing, let alone the hottest fash-ion polo shirts. In addition, polo shirts used to be the symbol of sports, and we always com-bine sports with that of being sunny and yeasty. We would like to be like a sun to catch others eyes. Shirts and t-shirt are also the trend, but the position of shirts is more closely to the word “formal” and t-shirt is “informal”. However, polo shirts are suitable for all kinds of situations.

As a fashion index, polo shirts have be-come a new symbol for youth and sports. Fashion is unavoidable, even in the future. So, how about buying a polo shirt and be part of the 'in' crowd?

FashionPolo

Shirt

by Apollo

14Graphic Source :http://www.magazin-z.ch/files/images/2008/7/mob428_1216194616.jpg

Many people love to sing and also listen to good songs; this is why singing con-tests on TV programs flourished. It is obvious that karaoke is a popular trend in Taiwan.

Karaoke is an entertainment in which people sing along with recorded music video by using a microphone in a chamber. A karaoke machine displays songs and

lyrics on a video screen, along with a moving symbol or changing color in order to guide people to sing. But when did Karaoke start? According to the Wiki website, when the Karaoke machine was invented in early 1970s by a Japa-nese musician, Daisuke Inoue , this machine soon spread to the rest of Asia as well as western countries in the 1990s.

Nowadays, young people are fond of kara-oke, karaoke is one of the main leisure activities for them, when it comes to holidays, there are many young people go to a karaoke. The reason why Karaoke suc-ceeded in Taiwan was because this entertainment can release pressure and people gain more energy .

Taiwanese is a race which is very diligent when working and studying, so the huge stress have nowhere else to be released. However, going to a Karaoke is one of the best ways for the shy race to relax , people would sing with excitement and shout in a small room. Thus, many bad emotions would disappear and then refresh people's mood through shouting and dancing. Besides, Karaoke room is a good place for people to hold many kinds of celebration.

As far as I am concerned, going to a karaoke is one of my favorite activi-ties. I love to sing and have fun with my friends, and we enjoy singing and dancing together. When the pitch got higher, the pressure was gone by the high pitch voice. After the exam was over, my friends and I usually go to a karaoke, and therefore we can relax ourselves and change our mood from being a nervous wrack to something peaceful. Going to a karaoke is also a great reward for studying hard.

by Rachel Yang

Karaoke-KTV

15Graphic Source :http://travelinmic1.com/images/karaoke_singer.gif

When it comes to fasion trend, it is not difficul to find out that more and more people who are nearsighted

choose to put on contact lenses instead of wear-ing glasses. To be honest, to me, the benefit of contact lenses is more attractive than glasses.

Contact lens is a piece of plastic designed to cover the cornea. The main purpose of wearing contact lenses is to correct people's sight prob-lem. However, people who never tried to put on contact lenses are worried about the damage that they will cause. In fact, according to the web-site of Shiou-Chuan Hospital, the lenses depend on tears to stay on the surface of the eyeballs. Besides, the website also points out that when eyes wink, tears will lubricate the contact lenses, and then they will move slightly, therefore, the oxygen under the lenses can be changed into new ones. Thus, wearing contact lenses is safe.

Lenses Contact In my opinion, wearing contact lenses is a good choice. First, it can help improve eyesight. People who put on the lenses no longer worry about their glasses falling off. And even, vain girls will choose colorful lenses to change the original color of pupil to make them look prettier.

To sum up, contact lenses not only solve the problem of eyesight, but also make peo-ple pretty. The advantage attracts people would rather put on contact lenses than wear-ing glasses. Therefore, undoubtedly wear-ing contact lenses is one colorful fashion trend.

by Joyce Wen

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Graphic Source : http://www.contactlenses2u.com/Images/Inserting_Contact_Lens.jpg

AroundMP3 Player

The WorldMP3 player has become the trend in recent years and a growing number of people is follow this trend. You can find almost everyone has one in his/her hands, especially the young people. I am no ex-ception. It has become a part of my life . I depend on it so much but I never think about how this tiny technology develops and why so many people follow the trend.

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What is MP3 player? According to Wiki-pedia, MP3 player is a consumer electronic de-vice that stores, organizes and plays audio files. The first MP3 player is produced by SaeHan Information Systems in 1998 and its headquar-ters are in Seoul, Korea. Its name is MPMan F10. People usually use MP3 player to listen to mu-sic. Now MP3 player has a lot of functions like calendar, stopwatch, book reader, recording, etc. Why do people want to buy a MP3 play-er? First, It's small enough so people can put it in their pocket. They also can listen to it when they are on the train or bus. Second, some people may think buying CD is expensive and they can only listen to it at home. Third, some people may think they are old-fashioned if they don't have a MP3 player because lots of their friends have one. I think MP3 player is a very great and con-venient invention because I can listen to my fa-vorite music with it wherever I go. I used to have a portable CD player. It's very popular and ex-pensive when I was in junior high school. Although it is a little inconvenient to carry, I still enjoy it a lot. However, some of my friends started to use MP3 player and they all thought it was very useful

AroundMP3 Player

The World

and convenient. Afterward MP3 player was mas-sively produced. I got my first iPod when I was 17. I haven't thought that technology would change so fast. You can only listen to music before, but now you can watch movies, listen to radio, even play games on your MP3 player. Besides, some companies such as LIVE ABC magazine sell their magazines with MP3 files which are recorded in advance. You can put those files into your MP3 player so that you can learn English much easier.

There are many reasons that make MP3 player become a trend. It does bring many people around the world happiness and con-venience. I think no one expects MP3 play-er would become so popular before and I guess this trend can last for a very long time.

by Zoe Hsieh

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Graphic Source:http://www.freewebs.com/anything-you-want-you-got-it/new-ipod-touch-2.jpg