Lack of Identity

People often ask me what I consider my home to me. England? No. Holland? No. America No.  “Then where?” comes the inevitable reply of perplexion. I wish I knew. Amongst the creole of standard English and American English, somewhere the answer must lurk. But as of yet, I have been unable to discover it. But that’s not a bad thing. This lack of identity enables me to view the world  from any perspective, reflecting on the maladies of George W. Bush without so much as a glimmer of patriotic embarrassment, or criticizing the island mentality of England without feeling guilty or traitoric. Yet there are definite drawbacks. For example, there is no state where I am not subject to bigotism or racism. But that is a small price to pay for what is, in my eyes, the great honor of tri-nationality.

Oh Really?

I’m not really surprised. Hollywood is pretty tight with the rich Jewish crowd. You know, the “democrats.” Is it just me, or aren’t the Democrats supposed to be the ones who don’t endorse wars. So it’s more than a tad…confusing, that a bunch of Kerry’s benefactors would come out and stand on the Israeli “Defence” forces side of the line?   I guess those actors only have on-stage brains, although the thought of Sylvester Stallone actually acting as opposed to just hitting a punching bag is hard to visualise.  But whilst the Demorats and Republicans are fighting it out for the Jewish vote
in 2008, people, are being murdered. And the IDF is responsible for far more of these deaths than the Hezbollah reservists. Ehud Olmert knows that America is too busy canvassing for the Jewish vote, and thus has the gall to -not for the first time- bomb civilian targets and UN peacekeepers. And just for the record, Ms. Kidman, just one kidnapping is not a terrorist attack. If that was the case, then thank God Britain hasn’t bombed the Algrave to pieces. It was Israel than started things off by planting two craters in Beirut Airport. Israel has committed war crimes. Civilians are dying. And it appears Hollywood is just fine with it.

Woohoo…I think

I was going to go on a undrunken rant about everything that was bugging me, but there was one small problem. Well, actually two problems. One, I would probably fail a breathalyzer test right now, and two, nothings bugging me. Frankly, I’m just elated that the long haul is finally over. School finishes tomorrow, which means that I definitely would fail a breatlalyzer test tomorrow, but more importantly, the pressure of having to produce reams of academic crap will finally be off our backs.  Well, at least my back. That’s right, I constitute one half of Year 10 that is actually up to date on coursework. The other half answers to the name Bendy Bean…                                                                                                     But I suppose that there is a sad background to it all. Tomorrow marks the last day at MVC for Ron Berry, a Moor-side mainstay for over 30 years. My friend’s parents were taught by him. That is the stature he measures up to. He is the only teacher I know who nobody has a bad word for.  The man is utter class. Yet his skill set is not restricted to the classroom. He also proved himself to be a worthwhile cricketer, knocking up a couple of boundaries and dealing…”zestfully” with the sledging from a rather cocky bunch of 7th graders. But that’s besides the point. His efforts have made the school what it is today, and for that, many people will be eternally grateful. If ever a new part of the school needs to be built, then its a safe bet that it will be the RB wing. Here’s to you, Mr. Berry.

Mmm….Homecooking

Well Santa Monica’s own, Zack Fleishman has made good on the promise he made at the 2005 Mercedes-Benz Cup. “Well, I sure love playing here, growing up over in Santa Monica. Hopefully I can do well here,” he said after his defeat over Vince Spadea. And that he has. On Tuesday night, Fleishman tore up 2007 Australian Open Finalist and Olympic Gold medalist Fernando Gonzalez, 7-6(5), 7-5. OK, so maybe “tore-up” is a little overstated, but this is the former Bruin’s biggest win to date. This is where he feels at home, and after a great year, including qualifications at two Grand Slam events – the Australian Open and Wimbledon, Fleishman truly deserves this. At those two events, he faced tough draws, coming up against Wayne Arthurs and Tommy Haas.

Things didn’t look good at the LA Tennis Center, but after taking down Gonzalez, the world is Fleishman’s oyster and he stands every chance at the Countrywide Classic crown. Yet he will be happy to have gotten this far, and the win means a lot to him. As Fleishman put it,
“I beat a top 10 player, at my school, my former college, my hometown. And the place where I practiced since I was nine years old. I was a ball boy here for years…. I just felt like I belonged playing out here and I wasn’t nervous.
“It was the most unforced smile ever in my life,” Fleishman said of his elation after the victory. Here is a guy who has endured the rough stuff and now is blossoming. US tennis, as a whole, is growing stale. Hopefully, Zack Fleishman will inject some valuable energy into the sport.

Darn it

OK. I admit it. I was wrong. Turns out the end of the academic year didn’t turn off the dribbling tap that is Musings from Meldreth. Instead, it seems have to provoked a whole blow of literary fodder. The quality probably isn’t greatest, but hey, its a start. Hmm. Its not like my time was particularly constrained, and I don’t like to make excuses, but that probably has a part to play for the reason  the blog had no entries for six weeks. Well that little dry spell is over. But blogging about blogging? Surely that is only for Mr and Mrs Blogger? My god. Well, the blogging is back.  Now all I’ve got to do is conjure something intuituve to write about. Hmm. Sarkozy vs. Sego was pretty interesting, but that really is old news. OK. I’ve got it. The Kashiwazki Nuclear Plant. For starters, its got a great name. Way better than Sizewell, or Three Mile Island. It conjures up the image of something high tech. Oh yeah, and its leaking radioactivity into Northern Japan. If I lived there, no, I wouldn’t be happy, but it is a media field day and it will be interesting to see what actually happens. Doesn’t seem terribly bad right now. But last time Japan suffered the effects of a bunch of neutrons and electrons going haywire, hundreds of thousands of people died. So you can bet that Abe will try and quell the fears of his people, as well as containing the damage. So just keep one eye on this space. I doubt anything will actually happen though. Just hope I don’t end up eating my own words again!

什么? 我…是好???

你好! 我释放的王约翰。 我在英国,我是荷兰和美国人 我。 我 很都喜欢南京,和在南京一个年。 我家有爸爸,妈妈,和两个弟弟。 和…我的爸爸是老师…我的弟弟和我是须生…我的妈妈是…妈妈! 我的学校是 Melbourn Village College。 他是非常昊!可是,我的朋友,大为, 没有一个比!不好! 我爱blogging,打网球和冰球。在 中国，我 参观 北京，西安，郑州，洛阳，登封，扬州，上海，北经， 上岗和厦门。 我明年去回到中国。是, 我的生活烦人。如此?

Refreshing???

It’s Official

As the academic year begins to wind down, it seems my will to think deeply winds down too. The effort to come up with something insightful and interesting just isn’t coming to the surface. Heck, I’ve haven’t really read a book in two weeks.  Its not like I’m bored out of my mind either. Quite the contrary. I can’t wait for the summer to  start. Parties, camp counselling, tennis, family and France fill the summer, its just this business means that is hardly space in my brain for any more complicated thought than “man, we’re gonna have an awesome weekend.” But hey, hopefully, the abyss of mindless nonsense as I chill by a swimming pool somewhere in the south of France. In a way, its probably good to fill my brain with nonsense for 6 weeks. With a little bit of a rest, my brain might just be raring to go come September time.

I can breathe!

Whew. What a relief. Finally, the hard bit’s over. Only three weeks left till summer vacation. Boy, oh boy I can’t wait. Its not like this has been a bad year, but it has been tough. The leap from 8th grade to 9th is huge. Last year, I was proud when I managed to write something 800 words in length. Now, if I’m lucky, that’s the half way point. I can only pray that a similar advance doesn’t await me at the end of next year, as I make the jump to Sixth Form College. But yeah, so next couple weeks I’ve got work experience in Cambridge. Sounds kinda boring, but hopefully I’ll be plesantly surprised. Still, I am so glad that I’ve got practically all my coursework behind me. As I said, I can breathe now. Sweet air!!!

This about sums it up…

Nanjing: Man living in harmony with Nature
http://www.sina.com.cn 2004/04/02 16:12 中国周刊

As early as the beginning of the 20th century, Dr. Sun Yat-sen commented that “Nanjing is a very charming and nice place which boasts of high mountains, deep water and the plateau. These three kinds of endowments bestowed by heaven are incorporated with the city and it is indeed difficult to find such beautiful scenery among big cities in the world.” These natural endowments have resulted in an ecological layout that incorporates mountains, water, the city and forest together. Based on such endowments, the environment of mountains, water and the urban layout form an organic blend, and a living city has been created, where man and nature coexist in harmony.

A natural park

Nanjing’s mountains are lofty and imposing. The western part of Ningzhen Mountains lies here. Mt. Zhongshan is located in the eastern part of the city and looks like a long dragon. Mt. Stone is in the western part of the city and seems to be a crouching tiger. Hence the saying “Mt. Zhongshan is like a lying dragon and a tiger is crouching in the Stone City.”

Nanjing’s water is both grand and charming, with the Yangtze river coming from the southwest turns to the east, and the Qinhuai and Jinchuan rivers meandering inside the city. Two lakes, Xuanwu and Mochou, are located in the east and the west.

The old and the modern parts are integrated within Nanjing City, combining ancient civilisation with modern vigour.

Nanjing’s forest is unique. Tall ancient trees can be seen everywhere in the city, green land and flowers dot all parts of the city. The street trees that have been growing here for many years have formed “green channels” that are spreading all over the whole city. These have led people to comment that “the city is inside the forests” and “the forests are inside the city”. That’s Nanjing: an ecological city for human living.

Building an ecological city

Nanjing City has an area of 6,597 square kilometres and a population of 6.4 million. The overall urban layout has been designed to permit the construction of living accommodation for 10 million people. Based on the city’s natural and ecological conditions, the innovative idea of an urban development zone has been put forward. This is the key space reserved for Nanjing’s future social and economic development. Its area is 2,947 square kilometres, and its current population is 4.55 million. According to the plan, a modern, big and open-style metropolitan layout will be created. In this layout, the Yangtze river acts as the main axis, with the main city at its core. There is a multi-element structure, with several sub-centres. The layout contains three forms of towns: the main city, the new urban districts and the new city.

The main city refers to the district south of the Yangtze river and is surrounded by highways forming a circle around the city. It has an area of 243 square kilometres, and its current population is 2.6 million. The new urban districts include Dongshan, Xianlin, Jiangbei. These will be at the centre of the expansion of the main city. The new city includes towns and counties such as Dachang, Xinyao, Banqiao, Longtan, Xiongzhou, Yongyang, and Chunxi. They respectively assume the functions of service centres for their own regions and will become the main development areas of Nanjing’s future secondary industries. It is planned that ecological spaces will separate the town-groups so that an “open-type” layout is created.

This layout is intended to merge the development of the city with both the mountains and the water. As a result, as the scale of the city is expanding, a harmonious dimension will be retained between the city and the natural areas, ingeniously combining Nanjing’s resources of mountains, water, city and forest, so as to form a Greater Nanjing that is truly “a city in the forest and a forest in the city”. Moreover, the “urban sprawl” so common to other big cities will be avoided.

A truly green city

Nanjing has established an urban green land system that is distinct in style and merged organically with the city proper, as well as the surrounding towns.

First of all, the mountains, forests, bodies of water, and farmland, as well as the and man-made protective forest between the city and towns form the basic framework, while the green land system inside the towns acts as the secondary framework, and the green belt along the communications corridor among towns and the river system forms a linkage. In this way a complete ecological protection net is formed. The three green ecological corridors, i.e., from Mt. Lingyan, Bagua Island to the Yangtze river, from Mt. Qinglong, Mt. Zijin to Lake Xuanwu and from Mt. Yuantai, Mt. Ox Head and Mt. Zutang to Mt. Laoshan, are strictly protected. Five big suburban parks, including Mt. Ox Head, Mt. Zutang, Mt. Tangshan, Mt. Qixia, Mt. Laoshan and Mt. Lingyan are being created, so as to meet people’s increasing requirements of recreation and leisure. Green open space will not be less than 75 % of the urban development area, and forest coverage will not be less than 40 %.

Secondly, the green land system of Nanjing City proper has Mt. Zhongshan, Yuhuatai, the scenery area of Mt. Mufu and the scenery belt along the Yangtze river as its main feature. The highway greenbelt surrounding the city and the greenbelt along the river in the main city act as the green outer ring, and the scenery belt of city walls of the Ming Dynasty acts as the green inner ring. The green corridor formed along the inner/outer Qinhuai river and Jinchuan rivers acts as the connecting band. Various kinds of parks, green land along streets are dotted everywhere in the city, forming a garden-type green land system composed of “two rings and four patches” where points, lines and planes are organically combined. They are integrated with the urban ecological main framework to form a seamless body where urban space and ecological space penetrate one another to form an organic whole. At the same time, plans provide for 80 % of citizens to find an area of green within five to ten minutes’ walk. Over the next ten years, public green space per capita in the city proper will surpass 18.7 square meters and the urban greening coverage will reach 55 %.

A city full of economic vigour

For a living city, an excellent ecological environment is a must. Furthermore, urban economic vigour and the cultural heritage need also be taken into account.

Nanjing is one of the four big central cities of the Yangtze river basin, and is also the northern central city of the Yangtze river delta, ranking second only to Shanghai. The city has convenient communications, prosperous industries, vigorous commerce and trade, developed science and technology and booming culture and education. All the above combine to provide a secure environment for its citizens’ work, recreational and entertainment needs.

A rich cultural legacy

Nanjing’s urban scenery of is nothing short of wonderful. Here, the mountains look down on rivers and lakes, and the entire city is merged into a vast expanse of green. Here lie the ancient city walls of the Ming dynasty, the lofty Yangtze river and the charming Qinhuai river. Urban construction pays much attention to the urban environmental design that is closely related to people’s work and life. It can be seen even in the details of the city’s buildings, the considerable public facilities, the patches of green land and public spaces, delicate small buildings and a comfortable environment for walking. It is this merging of nature and humanity that makes for its distinctive charm.

As the ancient Green philosopher Aristotle said, “People come to the city for survival and stay there for better living.” It can be seen that Man’s survival and development is a permanent pursuit in Man’s urban development. With the new century, people are still persisting in the pursuit of an excellent living environment and seeking a living city on a human scale, a place where Man and Nature coexist in harmony. We believe this dream will come true in Nanjing.

Chinese by Sun Juan

Translated by Pan Xuebing

Thanks to Sina News for this article – finally something reveals the splendour of Nanjing, perhaps my favourite city in the world. A real melting pot of the old, the new, the rich, poor. Even the east and west seem to merge here. Something you will only ever find in the world’s 4th biggest country. Well actually, that’s not quite true…enter Istanbul!