My country has a variety of plant life, including food crops such as rice and vegetables, wild plants such as the forests that protect our mountains, plants raised for their beauty, for example, flowers, and plants cultivated for their medicinal properties. All of these plants are important to us and to the balance of the ecosystem^ but if I had to choose just one, I would choose tea.

One reason that I think tea is important to the people of my country is that it is an important crop. My country is well-known for its tea and we export great quantities of it every year. It is very important to our economy. Another reason that I think it is important is that different kinds of tea have different properties, some of which are very good for our health. But perhaps the most important reason that tea is so important to my people is that it is a significant part of our culture. Many people drink tea every day. We not only drink the tea but talk over tea. Furthermore, tea is important in many of our traditions and in our history.

The above reasons are why I choose tea as the most important plant to the people in my country. It plays a big part in our lives today and has done so throughout history. Nothing can replace tea in my country and that is why it is so important to us.

There are undeniable advantages to both life in a big city and in a small town. The former offers more excitement and convenience while the latter offers a cleaner, quieter and often friendlier place to live. However, despite the advantages of small town life, I prefer to live in a big city for several reasons.

I First, life in the city is more convenient. More goods are available and stores are open later. Also, there is better public transportation so it is easier to get around. I can find almost anything I want easily in the city. Second, there are more ways to

^ .spend leisure time in the city. There are many places I can go to meet friends and have fun. Finally, and most importantly, the city offers more educational and career opportunities. The city often attracts the best teachers and the best companies. There is also a wider choice of jobs so it is easier to move up the career ladder.

For all of these reasons, I prefer to live in the city. Although I sometimes miss the fresh air and quiet life of a small town, nothing can make up for the opportunities that the city offers me. If one wants to be successful, I believe the best place to live is the city.

New Zealand censors are given NZ$i,ojo (320 pounds) a year to spend on the likes of piano lessons or aerobics to help rid "psychological pollution" encountered in their work. Twelve staff of New Zealand's Office of Film and Literature Classification, a government body responsible for classifying publications that may need to be restricted or banned, are entitled to the allowance, The Dominion Post newspaper reported. Under New Zealand law, "publications" include films, videos, music, books, magazines and computer games. Chief censor Bill Hastings said objectionable material, containing pornography or violence, had the potential to harm. "We're not machines. We're humans. Given that we have to do this job, we have to take some steps to negate the harm," Hastings told the newspaper. Last year the office viewed 1,224 publications, including 201 it classified as objectionable, according to its official website. "As this (NZ$i,c-5o) is part of their salary, we don't monitor how staff spend it, but some have told me that they spend it on gym memberships, music lessons and the like," Hastings said.

In the coast of Cuba lived an old fisherman. He was thin and had many deep lines in the back of his neck. His skin was very brown, and pulling heavy fish at the end of ropes marked his hands.1 But all these marks were old. Every part of him seemed old except his eyes. They were cheerful and the same colour as the sea.

For eighty-four days the old man did not catch fish. People said that he was unlucky. But the old man still loved the sea. He was still strong and a good fisherman. On the eighty-fifth day the old man sailed farther out to sea than any of the other boats. He sailed to where the water was very deep. Then he felt his fishing-line being pulled gently by a big fish, which was swimming very deep in the water.

The fish was so powerful that it pulled the boat after it. It took the small boat far out to sea. The old man could no longer see the land.

"Fish," he said softly, aloud, "I'll stay with you until I am dead. "

The old man pulled the line a little tighter, but he did not dare to pull it suddenly. The fish might jump and es-cape. Or it might dive down into the sea and pull the boat

after it. But the fish was strong and brave. It pulled the boat on and on.

When the fish rose at last to the top of the water, the old man saw that it was two feet longer than his boat. The old man had seen many great fish, but this one was the great est fish he had ever seen. It was also the most beautiful.

On the morning of the third day, the end came. Tire and full of pain, the old man threw his harpoon into the heart of the great fish.2 The fish rose high out of the water showing all its power and beauty. The next moment it was dead.

Slowly and painfully, the old man tied the fish to the side of the boat. Then he turned back and sailed towards the distant shore. He sailed well and he looked often at the huge fish.

Then the first shark came. The old man killed it, but he lost his harpoon and all his rope. Two hours later two more sharks came. Then he used a stick. Then the tiller. But he knew he was beaten.3 When he sailed into the little harbor and pulled his boat on shore, no fish was left. Only the giant white backbone.4

The next morning the fishermen in the village gathered round the small boat. They measured the big bone of the fish. It was eighteen feet long. "What a fish it was," some-one said. "There has never been such a fish. "

Those of us who spend our lives completing these tasks on a daily basis might be drawn to the advertisement as a moth is drawn to a flame. Could this be an advertisement for Heaven?No, this is simply the recipe for the best weekend three sisters could have.

My sisters and I come from a traditional family of the fifties. We were brought up in a cookie-cutter neighborhood like every other family on the block. There was a mother, father, three children and two dogs. We went to a neighborhood school and stayed within the safety of our surroundings.

As the girls grew and the family changed, our mother de-signed a plan in her mind that would put the CIA to shame. She would make sure that her "girls" would stay close throughout their adult life, no matter how hard she had to work. She plotted every time the girls were together. "Why don't you go out to lunch?Why don't the three of you spend a day shopping? I'll be more than happy to watch all the grandchildren, " were the words that rang clear each time we were together. Mother's plan was succeeding. We actually enjoyed the time together, and we thought we were detting away with murder. After all, what could be better than a $ lay out while Grand-mommie baby-sits all the children? Boy, did we pull the wool over her eyes! But this wolf in sheep's clothing, we called Mother had formed a bond between the sisters that nobody could break.

However mean your lile is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names'. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults in paradise:. Love your life,poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling glorious hours even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows o( the alms-house as brightly as Irorn the neh man's abode : the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it often happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means which should be more disreputable4.Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old,return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

There are thousands of stocks, but shares of the largest, best-known, and most actively traded corporations generally arc1 listed1 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) . The exchange dales its origin back to 1792, when a group of stockbrokers gathered under a butlonwood tree on Wall Street1 in New York City1 to make some rules to govern stock buying and selling. By the late 1990s, the NYSE listed some 3,600 different stocks. The exchange has 1,366 members, or "seats," which are bought by brokerage' houses at hefty'1 prices and are used for buying and selling stocks for the public. Information travels electronically between brokerage offices and the exchange, which requires 200 miles (320 kilometers) of fiber-optic cable and 8,000 phone connections to handle quotes' and orders*.

How are stocks trailed? Suppose a schoolteacher in California wants to take an ocean cruise. To finance the trip, she decides to sell 100 shares of stock she owns in General Motors Corporation9. So she calls her broker and directs him to sell the shares at the best price he can get. At the same time, an engineer in Florida decides to use some of his savings to buy 100 GM shares, so he calls his broker and places a "buy" order for 100 shares at the market price. Both brokers wire their orders to the NYSE, where their representatives negotiate the transaction. All this can occur in less than a minute. In the end, the schoolteacher gets her cash and the engineer gets his stock, and both pay their brokers a commission. The transaction, like all others handled on the exchange, is carried out in public, and the results are sent electronically to every brokerage office in the nation. ,''

Stock exchange "specialists" play a crucial role in the process, helping to keep an orderly market by deftly1" matching buy and sell! orders. If necessary, specialists buy or sell stock themselves when there is a paucity11 of either buyers or sellers.

The smaller American Stock Exchange1", which lusts numerous energy industry-related stocks, operates in much the same way and is located in the same Wall Street area as the New York exchange. Other large U. S. cities host smaller, regional stock exchanges.

The largest number of different stocks and bonds traded are traded on the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation system, or NASDAQ. This so-called over-the-counter exchange13, which handles trading in about 5,240 stocks, is not located in any one place; rather, it is an electronic communications network of stock and bond dealers. The National Association of Securities Dealers11, which oversees the over-the-counter market, has the power to expellr' companies or dealers that it determines are dishonest or insolvent. Because many of the stocks traded in this market are from smaller and less stable companies, the NASDAQ is considered a riskier market than either of the major stock ex-changes. But it offers many opportunities for investors. By the 1990s, many of the fastest growing high-technology stocks were traded on the NASDAQ.

Put every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. When he wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until there comes into his mind, no one knows how, a Burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants.

Then he becomes irresistible. Like the aristocrat, he does what pleases him and grabs what he covets; like the shop-keeper, he pursues his purpose with the industry and steadfastness that come from strong religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He is never at a loss for an effective moral altitude. As the great champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for his adulterated" Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the Peace.

The natives kill the missionary; he flies to arms in defence of Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and takes the market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island shores, he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross on it to his topgallant mast; and sails to the end of the earth, sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas with him.

He boasts that a slave is free the moment his foot touches British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six years of age to work under the lash in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He makes two revolutions' , and then declares war on our one in the name of law and order.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles. He supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his king's head on republican principles. His watchword is always Duty and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is lost.

Framing the Questions

Formulate questions whose answers can be readily computed. As the questionnaire is usually sent to a large number of respondents, the work of processing their responses can be daunting. To save processing time, you should try to design your questions carefully before hand. Ideally, they should take the form suitable for electronic processing. The sample questionnaire was designed for machine reading.

Make your questions easy to understand. To gather accurate and honest information, your should ask questions that are easy for your readers to understand.

Avoid loaded questions. Loaded questions are hard to answer. For example, the question "Why do people think that this brand is popular?" is unanswerable if the readers do not agree that the brand is popular in the first place.

Include one or two cross-referencing questions. Cross-referencing questions are those that ask for basically the same information but take different forms. Readers may not have answered all the questions carefully, so cross-referencing questions provide a check on reliability of their responses. Such questions are effective only if their emphasis is not altered, and the questions should have asked for identical information, albeit in a different way and usually in different sections of the questionnaire.

Avoid potentially biased questions. Rhetorical questions like "Don't you think...?" lead readers to think that you are for the idea. This may cause them to give biased answers, too.

Ask open questions as well as closed questions. Open questions do not require a one-word or curtailed answer. The reader has maximum freedom to present his views. This type of questions may reveal things you did not know. In addition, open questions may arouse the interests of the reader and set him working on the specific questions that follow. Yet there is the danger of digression and of undesirable spontaneity on the part of the reader. The data thus obtained may be difficult to code and process. Closed questions, on the contrary, involve specific questions and are answered in a definite way. They give precise information on certain questions. The disadvantage of closed questions is that the questions and answers may well be prejudged issues and responses. It is therefore productive to combine open questions and closed questions. Set more open questions in pilot studies and examine the specific areas they suggest by closed questions.

Arrange your questions properly. Starting with easier and safer questions may create a safe atmosphere for the reader to answer questions. Questions concerning demographic information belong to this type. When the reader feels comfortable with the questionnaire, he is likely to answer more specific and difficult questions.

A villager took his pears to the market to sell. His pears were juicy and sweet, but the price was high. A Taoist priest, in an old cap and worn cotton robe, came up to his cart and begged for a pear. The villager told him to go away but he would not. The villager got angry and began to use strong words at him. The Taoist priest said, "You've got a cartful of pears which must be in the hundred, but I am asking for only one of them and one pear is not much of a loss to you. Why are you getting so angry about it?" The onlookers said, "Give him a bad one and let him go." A waiter in the tavern, hearing the noisy bickering in the street, came and bought a pear for the priest. The priest thanked him and said to the crowd, "As a Taoist priest I am not that sparing. I've got first-class pears and I'd like to share them with you." Someone in the crowd said, "Why not eat your own pears then, since you've got some?"

"But I need the core of it as seed," the priest said and, holding up the pear with his hands, began to eat. When he ate up the pear, he held its core in one hand and, with the other, he took off a small shovel from his back. He began to dig in the ground a hole two or three inches deep, put the core in it and then covered it with earth. He asked if anyone in the crowd could find some hot water for him. One of them, an obliging person, fetched some boiling water from a shop by the street. The priest took it over and poured it where the core of the pear was buried.

While the people around watched, the core sprouted and grew and, in a moment, became a tree with exuberant foliage and, in another couple of seconds, it began to blossom and bear pears. The pears were big, emitting sweet fragrance and the tree was heavy with them. The priest picked them and gave them to the people around and soon there were no more. Then the priest began to cut the tree and he worked at it for a long while before he felled it. He put the tree, leaves and all, on his shoulder and walked off at a leisurely pace.

While the priest was playing the magic the pear seller, standing among the crowd, craned his neck to watch, forgetting his own business. When the priest was gone he found that all his pears in the cart were gone. It was not until then that he realized the pears the priest had dished out were all his pears. And then he noticed that one shaft of his cart disappeared and the cut was fresh. The pear seller was bursting with anger. He dashed off to run after the priest. Turning the corner he found the lost shaft was lying at the Foot of the wall. And by then he realized that it was the shaft of his cart, not the tree, that the priest was cutting. The priest was nowhere to be found and the whole marketplace was immensely amazed.