Domestic Violence

“Now let's move on to the subject of how a real man treats his wife. A real man doesn't slap even a ten-dollar hooker around, if he's got any self respect, much less hurt his own woman. Much less ten times over the mother of his kids. A real man busts his ass to feed his family, fights for them if he has to, dies for them if he has to. And he treats his wife with respect every day of his life, treats her like a queen - the queen of the home she makes for their children.”  - S.M.Stirling, Dies The Fire

It's sad to see how bad people treated each other nowadays, not only between others in society, but also between members in a family. People curse at each other, threaten each other, beat up each other, and do all kinds of horrible acts to the people who were supposed to be their family. Domestic violence is and have always been a problem in each and every country in the world. Everyday we see news of husbands beating up their wifes, children getting poorly treated by their parents, etc. Therefore, today I'm going to share some facts about domestic violence and, hopefully, after reading this blog you'll share this information to others so more and more people can be aware of how wrong domestic violence is.

So to start off, what's domestic violence? Oxford Dictionaries said that it's "Violent or agressive behavior within the home, typically involving the violent abuse of a spouse or partner." This simply means that domestic violence is the abuse of family members by other family members, like parents to children, husbands to wife, uncle to nephew, etc.They can happen in both heterosexual (man and woman) and same-sex relationship. Yes, what you've just read is, in fact, true. Same sex partners do show a tendency to abuse their other partner. Some even argue that domestic violence occurs just as frequent in same-sex relationship as they do in heterosexual relationship. So the next time you see a gay or lesbian couple in the street,  just remember that their relationship might not be as perfect as you might think.

In heterosexual relationship, the female is usually the victim of domestic violence. They are often being abuse by their male partner, either through verbal assault, physical assault, or even sexual assault. They are forced to do what the men wanted them to do, otherwise they'll get physically and/or mentally abuse by their husband. This leads these women to having low-esteem, depressed, PTSD, disfigurement, or even death.

Ok, you've seen how bad women have to suffer. But do you know that, sometimes it's the husbands who are the ones getting abuse? Just like how husbands abuse their wifes, these men are also put through physical, emotional, verbal, and even economic abuse by their wifes. But unfortunately, unlike women, who are encourage to report to the authority whenever they experienced domestic violence and can easily get help and support, men don't get that much support from society. Some studies have shown that woman who assaulted their their male partners are more likely to avoid arrest even when the male victim contact the police. In the court, women are also occasionally treated as a victim rather than an actual offender. This is really ironic because with all the banners and events around the world demanding equality in women, it's the women who is more capable of getting away with abusing their male partners, not only because of the bias in the justice system, but also because most men tend to refuse to report that they've been abuse because they fear that society is going to judge them and their masculinity. So if a man was to be abuse by his wife, he's most likely going to try to endure it, rather than seeking help from other people.

These are just some aspects of domestic violence that I wanted to share with you today/ There are so many more to say about domestic violence, this is just a tip of the iceberg. But I think this is enough to show you how domestic violence affect people's lives around the world. As we strive to improve the quality of our life, it's necessary to make sure that all the illness in our lives are removed. And what better way to do than to start by making sure domestic violence doesn't happen anymore. If you think that domestic violence is a serious problem in the world and it needs to be stop, please share these information to everyone you know so that they, too, can be aware of this problem. Domestic violence maybe hard to stop, but I believe that if we're all aware of this problem, we can prevent domestic violence from appearing, eventually erase it from our society.

Orphanage Visit

Happy Lunar New Year Everyone! I wish you, your family, and your friends a happy, healthy, lucky, and successful year to come. 

So before Lunar New Year, our 21st Century Class organized a little trip to the orphanages and families with difficult conditions. Using the money that we've collected through donation events we've created in the last 2 months, we were able to buy lots of food, drinks, cooking ingredients, and toys to give to the less fortunate.

The trip lasted half a day, with us traveled in one bus and the gifts in the other. We stopped at 2 orphanages and gave the gifts to the children and their supervisors. We heard a lot of stories about why people started the orphanage, how many children are there, what are their routines... We even got to have a look around the orphanages and see the conditions that the children were living in. I got to say, the place was "ok". It's decent enough to live in, but it's not as fancy, colorful, or comfortable as houses in cities. This kind of make me feel sad because I lived in a great house and I've never really cherished it. But it also makes me feel good to know that we've came here to support these children's lives by giving them gifts so they'll have a happy Lunar New Year.

This isn't the orphanage we visited but it was kind of like this.

We also stopped at about 6 or 7 houses with difficult conditions. Do you know those images of poor people that usually show up on TV or inspirational videos? Well that's kind of what we saw. We visited this one woman who was 98 and was living in this tiny "apartment" in a small and narrow alleyway. Why did I put brackets around the word "apartment"? Because it's more like a tiny room (about 4 meters wide, 5 meters long, and5 meters high) with a part of the wall sticking out like bunk beds. The woman was unable to get up because she was paralyzed from the waist down (like Professor X) and she depends on her neighbors to live. We talked to her for a little bit and gave her our gifts. It's not much but I think it will help her a lot throughtout the Lunar New Year. We also visited another old woman who lived in a house made out of dry leaves and logs. Behind her house are piles of trash and wild plants. She also seems to live on her own. We also talked for a little bit and gave her our gifts. She seemed to appreciated it a lot, which made me feel good to know that we've help someone.

This isn't the woman's house but it was kind of like this.

New Year is a time when you be with your family, enjoy the happiness of a new beginning and the warmness of spring. But for the less fortunate, it's a difficult time because they might not be able to enjoy this wonderful once-a-year moment. Therefore, I think it's our duty to give back to these people, to help them with their struggle, to give them a hand so that they can also feel the joyness of New Year. 

Energy and the Environment

If every U.S. home replaced just on light bulb with an ENERGY STAR® efficient light bulb, the amount of energy saved could light more than 3 million homes for a year and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to the emissions of about 800,000 cars." 

Energy is one of the most important part of our life. It cooked our food, it heated our water, it powered our devices, it lighted our rooms, etc. Anywhere we go, we can see that energy contributes greatly in the improvement of our daily life.

However, energy doesn't just appear out of nowhere. As many of you have already knew, energy can neither be created or destroyed, it changed from one form to the other. And it's this transformation that we get our energy from. Chemical energy inside molecules of woods, oil, gas changed to thermal energy when burned, kinetic energy by water currents and winds moved turbines to create electrical energy, etc.

But sadly, even though energy is a good thing, the process in which it is produced isn't always very environmentally healthy. In fact, the process in which oil is burned to fuel vehicles and machines releases toxic carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere that destroys the ozone layer, therefore allowing the sun's radiation to slowly turning everything on Earth into a barbecue buffet.

Not only that, some types of energy sources, if use correctly, can be used to create massive destruction, capable of making an area uninhabitable. A common example is nuclear energy. If used correctly, nuclear reactor can produce a huge amount of electricity through splitting uranium atoms. But if an accident happened, the effects can be catastrophic. An example of how danger nuclear energy can be is the Chernobyl accident. Considered as the worst nuclear power plant accident in history in term of cost and casualties, the Chernobyl accident causes hundreds of thousands of people to be infected with radiation. Some died while others were caught with cancer. The cost is millions of dollars and the entire area is considered uninhabitable for about 20,000 years.

There are two types of energy: renewable energy and non-renewable energy. Nowadays many are encouraging the use of renewable energy because they can be use over and over again and they don't release toxic pollution into the environment while non-renewable energy do.

However, people are still choosing non-renewable energy over renewable ones because they are very costly. The cost to invest in a renewable energy system like solar panels, wind turbines, water damps, biomass... is a lot and there are many other requirements that is needed to fulfill. Non-renewable energy, on the other hand, doesn't cost as much to harness, produce a lot of energy, and is easy to use. Therefore, even though renewable energy is clearly the better choice when it comes to saving the Earth and being renewable, the cost is just too much for some people that it's hard to persuade them to use renewable energy instead of non-renewable ones.

So what should we do to help save energy and the environment? Well simple! Just turn off devices when you don't need them or when you exit the room (remember to turn off the power source, too). Also, try travel by bus or by bike to reduce the amount of emission you release into the atmosphere. If there's anything else you can think of that can save energy, you go ahead and do it. Just remember, save energy = save the environment.

Type of energy: http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0907040.html
Chernobyl Disaster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster