Going to the Moon without HK – by Steven Steven Choi

China is going rapidly in developing the space programe. In this evening, the first launch to the moon is already started. This is a very important step for China in playing a role with other strong countries such as the U.S. Why is China spending so much money in developing the space technology, is there any result can benefit to our society?

In this morning, when I was in a hurry to school, I was traveling by KCR train, there is a device that I like a lot in the train, it is the TV boardcast. I think this service is so much better then the MTR. When I was watching the news in the train, boardcasting the news of China space programe on the way to the Moon, I did looked around and I discovered, the passengers are not realy paying tension to this news when comepare with another news about a school bus accident. I was wounderning what are people in Hong Kong thinking about the space launch.

If we take a look to the history, we can see what is the space programe talking about. The USSR was the leading country in space programe. The competition between USA and USSR which is all about the power. The power that a nation capable in dominate the world. It was a programe that packed with a shiny outlook and within it was just about a fear between Capitalism and Communism. This two countries were fear of each others’s power.

Who can dominate the Space then who will dominate the World. In the military aspect, when a nation is capable of dominate the air, just like the US, it is very likely to be a super power. The consequence is, from controling the ocean, air and the Space.
China is putting so much effort in building a nation to be strong. Some peole are worry and some people are excited. In Hong Kong, as a Chinese, do you worry or excited?

In our way of life and our culture, is there any elements that is link the the concept of nation. You may listen to the national anthem, because the TV play it everday before boardcasting the news. People listen to the pop music all the time but most of us would not put an anthem into our play list.

From my point of view, it is not easy to see if there is any dircet benefit to HK society from lauching the space programe. In the Hong Kong culture, there is a lack of patriotism and so the influence that China is making in the international affair will not make any direct impact to the culture of Hong Kong.

Between cyberspace and reality (by Bruce Lam)

Nowadays our science and technology is developed well, almost every family have a computer. Peoples may penetrate the computer to make many entertainments, such as making friends in chatroom, playing online games, watching films etc. However, lots of teenagers addicted in the cyberspace create by computer, why they are so crazed to it? And how does the computer has so much attractive power?

Computer is an instrument that for us to work with, but it can give us many entertainments. At present, the most popular way to contact our friends at home is using the computer program called “MSN” (Windows Live Messenger). Youngsters usually chat with the others by typing words, its advantages are can be chat together with lots of people at the same time, also we can use our web cam to chat with our friends oversea, which can see each other’s face. In this case, telephone can not do at these points. However, this type of communication produced some disadvantages. When the youngsters always chat with typing words, they get used to typing a shorter form of words. This theme is because of their laziness and the main reason is those word were pronounce similar as the letter. For example, “c u tmr” means “see you tomorrow”, “be4” define as “before”. Afterwards when they doing some writing work, they become accustomed to write those short forms.

And other entertainment which attracts teenagers is online game. There are many games for computer, but those games designed similar to our daily life. “The Sims” is a game imitate our life, it can control the player to do everything we do the same in the reality, going to school, cooking dinner, walking out on the street etc. Furthermore, there are some games needs the player upgrade their characters with some requirement, most likely they have to do some mission. Some of it can feed a virtual pet in the game. You may say that those game are interesting, but think a bit more, sometimes teenagers can not pull out to the role. It will harm to their real daily life because of they spend lots of time in it.

Film is the most poplar entertainment we reach, no matter how old you are, you must interest to film. Nowadays the production of films usually added some special effect in it. As it is a film, their action may not be true, so that we can’t do in the reality. When youngster watched those films, they may try to mimic the movie star and it may cause injury. Today, the main theme of films usually is about robberies, terrorist and rape. Although it is fabrication, some people will still believe it is true, and always imagine it will happen soon. It often creates an unhealthy climate to the audience. Especially teenagers, they will always dream about someday there will have some terrorists rush to their school and superman will come to save them.

 We have to differentiate between reality and cyberspace in our life; don’t always believe the movie shown in the TV or computer, if you turn it over, your life will be in chaos.