My two TBS 2 classes

Well it's been very interesting looking at your blogs and reading your 'About Me's', we certainly have a diverse range of interesting and creative students. Some of you have created some great blog URLs, Andrei, Naz, Haru in Stream A and Choi, Aki, Theresa, K.D, Jessie and Audrey in Stream C.
Although we are all unique, we have many things in common with each other. Many of us like and or have pets either here in NZ or in our own countries including Naz, Amy, in Stream A and Aki and Choi in Stream B. Some of us however are not particularly fond of pets - Min and Franck in Stream A for example. But that's OK, we won't hold it against them;-) (Remember to double click on an word to check its meaning)
A few of you have worked either in New Zealand or in your own countries. Sunny was a flight attendant for Air New Zealand, Lera is a speech therapist and works in a kindergarten in Russia, Franck used to work for a telco in Senegal and Duu is a nurse in PNG. A few of you are lucky enough to have family and relatives here with you in New Zealand. Both K.D. and Sopeng in Stream C have brothers living in New Zealand.
You have a wide range of hobbies and sports feature highly among your hobbies. We even have a sports champion in our midst! Andrei is a keen wrestler and used to represent his country in competitions and is now on the New Zealand National team. But I don't think he's going to Beijing this year. Ally likes table tennis and Nataliya and Amy both like swimming. Football or soccer is also popular with Choi, Joey, Timmy Andrei being keen fans. I'm a little surprised that KD and Franck aren't football fans;-) Other hobbies apart from sports include gardening which both Sonia and Susan enjoy. Theresa and Choi both like playing computer games. Lots of you are interested in music, Jessie of course, Lera, Shahrzad, Amy, Naz, Sopheng and Aki. I wonder what sort of music you all like. You could put links on your blogs to your favourite bands' websites or examples of the kind of music you like. Walking is also a popular pastime with Sunny, Ally, Min, and Shahrzad. Why don't you get together during the break and go for a walk in the Waitaks.
One of us is quite entrepreneurial and makes jewellery for a hobby. she has even sold some of her creations on Trade Me. Well done!
Finally regarding future Andrei and Timmy would both like to join the police in the future which is really cool I think because we need more ethnic policemen and women in our police force.

Tool Bar Functions

My name is Mel. I come from Cornwall in the UK.
Here is a link on flickr to a photo of Constantine the village where I grew up

photo test

Blogger Test in 182-1003

I'm using Firefox to access Blogger and i can see the text tool bar, insert links and pictures in my New Post.
Let's see if I can save it as a draft which we couldn't do on IE.
OK I've saved it as a draft and can access it in Edit posts. Now let's publish it.
Hurrah!! Publishing is no problem with Firefox.
Let's all start using Firefox rather than IE. You can download Firefox for Windows free here
onto your own computer at home.
Next time you are in the Call lab don't open IE, open Firefox.
Good Luck

Unitec Student Union 'Sounds in the Sun'

Sopeng and Ally came with me to the Orientation day 'Sounds in the Sun' hosted by Unitec Student Union. There was quite a festival atmosphere there.

What could they possibly be doing? And did they ever win?

More competitions.....

....and then there was the free coca cola if you did 10 star jumps.

New Design in China - tourist guide in British newspaper and exhibition in London

As we've been talking about how Beijing is changing, I thought you might be interested in an article I read at the weekend in my favourite British newspaper about new design in China.
The article is a guide for tourists visiting Beijing & Shanghai this year and recommends both the must see modern architectural achievements along with some more traditional buildings. The article mentions that as more and more high rise architectural marvels appear on the skyline a debate has begun about preserving the traditional residential neighbourhoods known as 'hutongs' and courtyard houses called 'siheyuan'. I like this picture of a hutong from Flickr. I'm not sure if this is a hutong or siheyuan. Perhaps you could enlighten me, what do you think? Look at the comments from 'airchild'. This looks like a siheyuan.
The article also mentions a new exhibition opening at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in March which showcases new cutting edge design in Beijing, Shenzhen & Shanghai from architecture and art to fashion design and restaurants. Check out the exhibitions web site. I quite liked the 'Commune by the Great Wall' in Beijing, the 'yoga laptop' and 'The Times Magazine Supplement photo? in Shanghai and the 'Youth and Beauty poster series' from Shenzhen.