What is this?

Hi! My name is Ulrik, and this is my student blog. My posts will be based on tasks and subjects given to the class by my English teacher Ann. I am currently in my third year at Sandvika High School, Norway.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The bottled dream

The world is at an water crisis- you may not realize it, but it is true. The shortage of water around the world is starting to become a serious problem, and peoples will to do something about it does not seem to be there. Water is the source of everything on this planet, and everything we make, eat and drink is reliable on water, or is water. But the water disappearing from the major reservoirs is only one part water problem; the contamination of the existing drinking water, the tap water in peoples homes, is causing diseases and a high number of problems, mostly ignored by the government. So not only is the drinking water disappearing, but we are poisoning what we have left.

Because of the poisoned water, people tend to by bottled water- the pure, clean, highly controlled and regulated water you can by on the local supermarket- at least, people think it's cleaner and purer than the tap water. Bottled-water is not only, in many cases, just as contaminated as the tap water, but it is simply unfair to make the worlds population dependent on it.
Water is the one thing we are one hundred percent dependent on, and if we were to say that "ok, so the tap water is contaminated, but lets focus on clean bottled water"- then the only way of getting, what might be cleaner water, is by buying it. So..if you can not afford to buy the bottled water, then you have to drink the tap water.
The problem right now however, is that people think the bottled water is cleaner- which is wrong. A 2010 test showed that 70% of the most popular bottled water-brands contained much more bacteria than the tap water, and sometimes one hundred times more that the permitted limit. The companies tapping the water is using pictures of glaciers, and are naming the brands after famous mountains- making the impression that it's pure- however they are often following other rules than the public tap-water systems, and they are not forced to do the same testing of the water. But there has been done tests, and traces of birth control pills, steroids, painkillers and much more are found in the bottles, as well as the tap-water.

The point is, that being dependent on bottled water is not a solution to anything- it is simply a bad idea. Today we watched a documentary called "the last call of the oasis", and it deals with this exact subject. In the documentary they use Singapore as an example of how to solve the water shortage-crisis. There, they recycle water- and they have been able to get past the so called "yuck" factor. People seem to forget that all water is recycled in nature, so does it really matter if we speed up the process and recycle it our selves? In Singapore they have managed to get acceptance from the consumers, and the sewage is processed into pure drinking water. It is probably as simple as that; get past the "yuck" factor, and start recycling water.

Friday, January 3, 2014

The Joy Luck Club- First impressions

The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan, and tells the story of four Chinese immigrants and their four daughters, who forms a club- The Joy Luck Club. In the club they play mahjong for money, and the book is structured much like the game. With four parts, divided into sixteen chapters and sixteen different stories- all related but told from a different point of view.

I have now read the first chapters of the book, and I must say it's really interesting and catchy. I am not really a "reader", I don't read many books a year, and when i do it's mostly biographies etc, but I am looking forward to reading the rest!

Happy new year!