mY vIgoRouS eFFoRt tO iMpRovE mY eNgLisH sKillS...

English is very important nowadays. English language is a world language. In fact, most text books that we used or reference books are mostly in English. In Malaysia, the Ministry of Education have change the syllabus for Mathematics and Science subject from Malay to English. It will help students in their university as in universities, we will learn in English. As i am going to study abroad, English is very important for me to survive there. In Uniten, I took IELTS to help me with my study there. IELTS can be divided into few part which are writing, reading, speaking and listening. I have tried few ways to improve myself in all four skills.

Writing skill is one of the hardest part of the test. Writing involved few components which are grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary and the content. Without all these skill and component, we cannot get good marks for writing. So, to improve my writing, i read a lot of material to get the knowledge. Reading lots of material helped us to get the idea to write if we are given certain topic. This will help to put additional example or information in our essay. I started reading English books since I was in standard six. I think it really did help me to write. It helped me to familiarized with new words and sentence structure. Sometimes when I went to the hospital, i love to read the magazines provided, such as Health Today. My favourite author since i was in primary school is R.L Stine as he loves to write thriller and horror stories. The language being used is not that simple or too hard to understand. Beside that, doing lots of practice helped me to improve my essay writing. Doing lots of exercise help me to discipline and time myself to finish the essays in required time.

Reading is all about understanding the passage given and answering the question given referring to the passage. I did some practice to help me understand and familiarized with the pattern of questions. In reading, time is very important. It takes time for me to understand the passage as to me, the language being used is quite difficult to understand. To help me to understand the passage better, i referred to the dictionary if i could not guess or catch the meaning of a sentence. Doing lots of exercise helped me to time myself so that i can answer the questions in time provided.

In my opinion, speaking is the most crucial part. Speaking is very hard to score. That's because in Malaysia, we did not use English as the first language. We used Malay in our daily life. We are more fluent with Malay than English. Most of us nowadays are afraid of being tease when speaking English. It has been a culture among our people to tease those who speak English. This kind of culture should not happen as this will discourage people to speak English. I improved my speaking by using English in my daily life. At my house, we used English sometime as we talked and chit chatting among siblings. It helped me to improve my speaking skills a lot. Watching television helped me to learn how to pronounce words. Sometime i used Yahoo Messenger to interact with other people. I always go to the regional chat room. I can interact with people from all over the world. I think it helped me to communicate with them as we used English as we chatted. Most of them are from Australia and India.

For listening skills, I improved myself by listening to radio and watching television. As I am offered to further my study at Australia or New Zealand, i watched the television series from Australia, McLeod's Daughters. It helped me to familiarized my self to their dialect and pronunciation. This will automatically helped me when i did listening exercise in class as the person in recorded tape used their dialect to speak. Listening to mix. FM and Hitz.FM helped me to improve my listening while enjoying myself listening to music. Doing exercise and some practice in listening helped me too a lot. I used the website given by Miss Eliza to do online listening practice.

I really hope that i can improved myself in all English skills as it will help me in the university. May all my effort will give a good result.

mY eid eXpErieNce....

Every Muslim in the whole world have been fasting for the whole month of Ramadhan. It had come to the end and we celebrated the Eid. This year's Eid is something new for me as i am now studying in college. During the fasting month, I spent the whole month fasting here, at Uniten which is far away from my hometown. As the holiday started, my parents picked me up at the college and we continued our journey to my grandparents house at Batu Pahat, Johor. I was so excited to celebrate the Eid with my grandparents and relatives there. I haven't been there for a long time. Our journey from Bangi to Batu Pahat took about 4 hours. It was quite tiring but all the excitement made me forget about it.

When I arrived at my grandparents house, it was second last day of fasting before the Eid. I went to the 'Bazar Ramadhan' to look for some food to break fast. My uncle bought Nasi Beriani and we ate together during the break fasting. During night, all the women and girls gathered at the kitchen to prepare the ingredients to cook for the Eid. I helped to prepare ketupat before it is being cook on the next day. At 9.30 at night, my grandmother, my aunt and i watched 'Susuk' as it was the last episode. It was interesting and i was very happy watching it with my family.

On Friday, we cooked everything we need for the Eid. My grandmother cooked lots of dishes for the Eid which are ketupat,lepat, rendang, samba lodeh, chicken curry, chicken with soy sauce,and sambal kacang. My cousins, my siblings, my mom and aunt help my gandmother at the kitchen as she is not feeling very well. My aunt have to buy oxygen machine to help her breath when she cannot breath well. I was sad to see her when she is not well. We cooked together and it was fun. I don't even get the chance to take bath for the whole day as we were so busy in the kitchen. Hehehe.... It has been tradition for years to send some ketupat and dishes to our relatives before the Eid. We called it ' Berkat'. That's why we have to cooked early, so that we can send it to them.We finished cooking in the evening. My aunt and my uncle helped to send the dishes to our relatives. I slept quite late to prepare for the Eid. My cousins and siblings played firecracker during night of eid.

All of us got up early in the morning of Eid. All the men went to the mosque for Eid's prayer. The rest helped to clean the house before our guests came to our house. I didn't get the chance to go to mosque as I have to put all the kuih raya on the table and prepare foods for our guests. All of us looked beautiful with our new baju kurung and baju melayu. Before the guests arrived, we took pictures and shaked hands and asked for forgiveness with each other. It was the saddest part of the day. I almost cried when i watched my parents and grandparents cried. We had our breakfast with ketupat and all the dishes. I enjoyed eating ketupat with sambal kacang and rendang so much. It was marvellous and so delicious. Then, our relatives arrived. Most of them are my granparents siblings. They are closed as my grandparents took care of them since they were young. My grandfather have 9 younger sisters and brothers. I got some duit raya from them. My grandparents and aunts gave lots of duit raya to me. My parents gave me RM60 as my duit raya. hehehe

On the second day of Eid, my family went to visit our relatives while my aunt stayed at home to help my grandmother. We went to few houses as we seldomly meet them. In the afternoon we went home and our relatives still came for a visit. It was a busy day for us. On the next day, my family and i prepared to went back to our house at Terengganu. It was fun celebrating Eid there. At the same time i was very worried with all my assignments and final exam that is coming two weeks after the Eid.

That is all my Eid experience. I enjoyed myself and it was one of memorable moments of my life. I will never forget this event.

tHe waY tHinGs and pEoplE look, hOw aPPeAraNce is ConTroLLeD bY oUr GeNes aNd hOw ThiNgs caN bE rEcoRdEd oN fiLms...

Cells are the fundamental working units of every living system. All the instructions needed to direct their activities are contained within the chemical DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).
DNA from all organisms is made up of the same chemical and physical components. The DNA sequence is the particular side-by-side arrangement of bases along the DNA strand (e.g., ATTCCGGA). This order spells out the exact instructions required to create a particular organism with its own unique traits.
The genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA. Genomes vary widely in size: the smallest known genome for a free-living organism (a bacterium) contains about 600,000 DNA base pairs, while human and mouse genomes have some 3 billion. Except for mature red blood cells, all human cells contain a complete genome. Each chromosome contains many genes, the basic physical and functional units of heredity. Genes are specific sequences of bases that encode instructions on how to make proteins. Genes comprise only about 2% of the human genome; the remainder consists of noncoding regions, whose functions may include providing chromosomal structural integrity and regulating where, when, and in what quantity proteins are made. The human genome is estimated to contain 20,000-25,000 genes.

Genes are being transfered from parents to their next generation. That is why most of us will have the same criteria from our family, whether our parents or grandparents or other previous generation. Genes helped us to identify someone. The most recent case is the one involving the late Nurin Jazlin Jazimin. She has been missing for a month and her family have been looking for er everywhere. THen, during September, a body was found in a bag, however no claimed the body or even recognized it. Nurin's parents were asked to see whether it was their daughter. They denied it as the body did not looked like their daughter. A DNA test was carried out and it has proven that it was Nurin's body. It was the worse case ever in MAlaysia and it attracts everyone attention. This case proved that DNA test help a lot in Forensic world and help to investigate crime.

In my opinion, photography is a wonderful time full of creativity and discovery. Photography can be treated as a hobby to fill your leisure time. At my previous school, we have a photography club. By joining the club, we learn how to capture pictures and make a video. To me, it is an interesting things to do. As I joined the club, I learn how to used digital camera and other types of camera. I learn how to capture scenery picture and potrait. Photos and videos can help us a lot including recording an event. Photography can also be a good career.Nowadays, photography is also used in crime scene investigation. People sometime used professional photographer to take pictures in certain occasionsuch as wedding ceremony.

Transport and Tourism

Transport is very important for us to travel. Transport also help ur to communicate with people. Transport and tourism have a strong relation. Whenever we heard about tourism, we will also hear about transport. There many type of transportations such as boat, motocar, bicycle, train and others. Transportation nowadays have developed so much. It have changed a lot compared to the old days. During the old days, we only have bicycle, train, boat and small car. However, as the world developed, many new transport is being created such as shuttle and lots of other transport.

Transport is related to tourism. If the transportation in one place is poor, then the tourism will also going down. That's because if there is no good transport, it will be hard for people to travel. Road also being considered as transport. If we have car, but there is no road, then it will be useless.

In Malaysia, our tourism sector have developed well as we have new roads, highways and our public transportation is not so bad. As KLIA was built, more aircraft can land there. KLIA have become an international airport and one of the largest airport. Tourists from all over the world come and visit our country anytime they want.

Space, Developments That wiLL aFFect OuR FutUrE and ReseArcH PaperS

As the world always undergo developments and it never stops, new field have been discovered. Human nowadays have the ability to explore and travel to space. The latest mission this month have proved that human never stop exploring. We, as Malaysian should be proud of our country as this mission involved our own people, Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor Sheikh Mustapha. The mission involved an American, a Russian and a Malaysian. The Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft is used for the mission. The aim of this mission is to do a research on organism in space. The team will be back to earth on 21th October. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak will be at Moscow on Oct 21 to welcome back to earth Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor Sheikh Mustapha, the first Malaysian to go into space.

Another research have been done few years back by scientists. It have been found that human may have the chance to live at Mars. According to their research, Mars have the similarities with Earth and human might be able to live there as they said that Earth is dying. However we haven't know whether this is true or not yet. Research is still being done to proof whether it is true or not.

Beside space, biotechnology also have been going through some development. Indeed, the modern world went through the “physics revolution” that saw the birth of nuclear power and the “chemical revolution” that lead to the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. And now it is the biology revolution. Biotechnology now plays a central role in developing medicine and other therapies, understanding diseases, forensics, improving animal and plant production, increasing industry effectiveness, environmental monitoring and developing alternatives to fossil fuels. Some aspects of biotechnology are very contentious. Genetically modified food, use of animals in research, stem cell development and cloning hog the headlines. These technologies may be unsafe with risks to us or the environment. There are sometimes serious conflicts with society’s beliefs.Still, biotech is the current buzz and the definite wave of the future. It is seen as the technology to “heal, feed and fuel” the world. There is a huge “biotech war” shaping up globally with much money being poured into this arena. Malaysia has also plunged into the global marketplace with the launch of the National Biotech Policy on April 28, 2005. The Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation is the facilitator for our biotech ecosystem. They will also look into creating commercial opportunities; providing funding and industry development services; and advancing research and development and commerce in agriculture biotechnology, healthcare biotechnology and industrial biotechnology. The National Biotechnology Policy is to be implemented in three phases that would eventually see Malaysia as a global biotech player with 20 global icons by 2020.

Malaysia have lunched MEASAT-3 a year ago. Launched on Dec 12, 2006, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, the MEASAT-3 satellite had undergone extensive in-orbit tests conducted by 15 Boeing space engineers stationed on-site at the MEASAT Teleport and Broadcast Centre. MEASAT chief operating officer Paul I. Brown-Kenyon said the successful deployment of MEASAT-3 at the 91.5 degree east orbital location boosted the company's satellite capacity by over 300 percent while extending the network to 110 countries, representing 70 percent of the world's population.Through MEASAT-3, RTM channels would be able to broadcast to 110 countries across Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa from 25 countries currently.