Rickshaws Reinvented
The ancient transportation takes a modern turn
By Dina Modianot-Fox , Smithsonian.com, March 01, 2007
Part One – Vocabulary
From London to Anchorage, New York to Hanoi, it seems as if people everywhere are catching a ride on rickshaws. Surprised? Thought that those human-pulled carts, century-old symbols of exploitation and poverty, were obsolete?
As of last December, they are—at least in the stereotypical form of a man in rags and a straw hat running barefoot through crowded Asian streets, drawing a cart carrying one or two obviously better-off passengers. That's when the government of West Bengal banned man-pulled rickshaws in Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta)—the last place in the world where they were in widespread use. Explaining the ban at a press conference, Kolkata's Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said, "We can't imagine one man sweating and straining to pull another man." An estimated 18,000 rickshaw drivers have since taken to the streets to protest what they see as the removal of their livelihoods.
Though traditional rickshaws might have made their last trips, the concept of one person using his muscle to pull a cab with people or goods remains very much alive. Companies with names like "Cleverchimp Rickshaw" and "Orient Express Rickshaw," have sprung up across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas, offering an environmentally friendly way to shop, avoid big city traffic, sightsee, deliver packages—even return home after a night on the town. Several dozen companies operate in the United States alone.
Modern-day rickshaws vary in style from country to country, use bicycle pedals (often assisted by small motors), are primarily three-wheeled and can be canopied or completely enclosed. A few are resplendent in neon colors; some look like space vehicles, others show off the handiwork of their cultures, still others are as covered in advertisements as NASCAR entries. Universally known as rickshaws, they're called velo-taxis in most of Continental Europe, cyclos in Cambodia and pedicabs in Britain and the United States.
While they might carry the same genes, these new-age old-school vehicles differ substantially from their infamous ancestor—a two-wheeled cart with a collapsible hood and two long shafts.
"When technology met the rickshaw, everything changed," says Peter Meitzler of New York's Manhattan Rickshaw Company. "The modern pedicabs have hydraulic brakes, suspension, complete lighting systems, seat belts, full weather canopies, steel frames and fiberglass bodies."
Meitzler, whose title Person in Charge betrays his innovative spirit, is one of literally hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world hooked on pedal power as an alternative to gas guzzling. "You experience the urban environment differently when you're riding in a rickshaw," he says. He used "rickshaw" in the company name because it was internationally known.
The term is actually a shortened form of the Japanese word jinrikisha; literally, human-powered vehicle. There are conflicting theories about its inventor—the most prevalent is that Jonathan Scobie, an American missionary in Japan, designed it in 1869 to transport his invalid wife—but there is no question that Japan was the first country to use it widely. By the late 1870s, the rickshaw was that nation's main mode of transport, with an estimated 40,000 of them operating in Tokyo alone.
From there it quickly spread to other Asian countries. Peasants migrating to cities in search of work saw in rickshaw-pulling a quick, if exhausting, way to make a living. Several books and films, notably City of Joy, based in Kolkata, and Rickshaw Boy, the unenviable first Chinese Communist movie shown in American theaters, have chronicled the lives of rickshaw pullers, the very image of the downtrodden.
Historically, most rickshaws were rented, and the drivers had to work 17- to 18-hour days to survive. They ran in a single file at about five miles an hour through the mud and grime of teaming streets, with the front driver calling out warnings of any road hazards ahead. The rickshaw was not only their livelihood; it was also where they kept their few belongings, where they slept and where they ate.
Regarding them as a capitalist evil and a sign of China's subjugation to the West, the Communists banned rickshaws shortly after taking over that country in 1949.
All across Asia, pedals replaced the shafts and the pulled rickshaws became reserved as a unique treat for travelers visiting tourist spots. Today, they often serve as backdrops for posed souvenir photos, happy reminders of an unhappy past.
Part One- Vocabulary
Fill in the blanks with the correct underlined word in the passage.
1. The children were ______________ and used for child labour.
2. The people live in deep __________. There were hunger and starvation.
3. The ________________ passengers traveled in the luxurious first-class cabins while the poor squeezed like sardines in the dirty, smelly and overcrowded third class cabins.
4. The trishaw riders worked hard and earned little and they represented the _______________ group of people in the country.
5. She held the _______________ position of the discipline mistress, having to explain how the terrible accident started. No one wanted this type of dirty job.
6. They walked through the _________________of the streets, in search of their lost brother, but their efforts were in vain. He was nowhere to be found.
Part Two: Comprehension
1. Find another word in the passage with the same meaning as “human-pulled”.
2. Find another word in the passage with the same meaning as “prevalent”.
3. How useful was the trishaw to their owners?
4. Describe the modern day trishaw.
5. How is the trishaw used in the modern era?
Part Three- Reading for Ideas
1. What do you think it is like to be poor?
2. What are the ways to become rich?
3. What would you do if you win a million dollar lottery?
4. The MRT system in Singapore is convenient and safe. Do you agree?
5. Suggest ways to control the number of cars in Singapore.
ANSWERS
1. exploited
2. poverty
3. better-off
4. downtrodden
5. unenviable
Sunday, May 23, 2010
PUFFIN COMEBACK
A Puffin Comeback
Atlantic puffins had nearly vanished from the Maine coast until a young biologist defied conventional wisdom to lure them home
By Michelle Nijhuis
Smithsonian magazine, June 2010
Grammar, Vocabulary, Editing and Comprehension Questions
Part One – Grammar-Tenses
Impossibly cute, with pear-shaped bodies, beak and eye markings as bright as clown makeup and a wobbly, slapstick walk, Atlantic puffins were once a common sight along the Maine coast. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries people 1. ________(collect) eggs from puffins and other seabirds for food, a practice 2. __________(memorial) in the names of Eastern Egg Rock and other islands off the coast of New England. Hunters 3. _________(shoot) the plump birds for meat and for feathers to fill pillows and 4. _______(adorn) women’s hats.
By 1901, only a single pair of Atlantic puffins 5. ________(know) to nest in the United States—on Matinicus Rock, a barren island 20 miles from the Maine coast. Wildlife enthusiasts 6. ________(pay) the lighthouse keeper to protect the two birds from hunters.
Things began to change in 1918, when the Migratory Bird Treaty Act 7. _______(ban) the killing of many wild birds in the United States. Slowly, puffins 8. ________(return) to Matinicus Rock.
But not to the rest of Maine. Islands that puffins 9. ________(be) once inhabited 10. _________(be+ become) enemy territory, occupied by colonies of large, aggressive, predatory gulls that 11. ________(thrive) on the debris generated by a growing human population. Though puffins endured elsewhere in their historic range—the North Atlantic coasts of Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Britain—by the 1960s the puffin was all but forgotten in Maine.
In 1964, then 18-year-old Stephen Kress was so smitten with nature that he 12. ______(sign) up to spend the summer washing dishes at a National Audubon Society camp in Connecticut. There Carl Buchheister, president of the Audubon Society, 13. _________(entertain) the kitchen crew with stories about his seabird research on the cliffs of Matinicus Rock. Kress, who had grown up in Columbus, Ohio, 14. ________(go) on to attend Ohio State, where he 15. _______(earn) a degree in zoology; he then worked as a birding instructor in New Brunswick, Canada, where he visited islands overflowing with terns, gulls—and puffins.
Part Two- Vocabulary. Underline the correct word.
When, in 1969, Kress 1. (discovered/landed) his dream job, as an instructor at the Hog Island Audubon Camp on the Maine coast, the islands he visited seemed 2. ( dull/desolate), with few species other than large gulls. He 3. ( reflected/ wondered) if puffins could be transplanted so the birds might once again accept these islands as home. No one had ever tried to 4. ( place/ transplant) a bird species before.
“I just wanted to believe it was possible,” Kress says.
Though a handful of wildlife biologists supported him, others dismissed the idea. There were still plenty of puffins in Iceland, some pointed out; why bother? Others insisted the birds were hard-wired to return only to the place where they had hatched and would never adopt another home. Still others accused Kress of trying to play God.
Kress argued that bringing puffins back to Maine could help the 5. ( special/ entire) species. As for playing God, Kress didn’t see a problem. “We’d been playing the Devil for about 500 years,” says Tony Diamond, a Canadian seabird researcher who has 6. (collaborated/ argued) with Kress for decades. “It was time to join the other side.”
Kress went to work preparing a 7. ( cave/ place) for puffin chicks on Eastern Egg Rock, a seven-acre granite island about eight miles 8. ( on/ off) the coast of Bremen, Maine. Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shot dozens of gulls and drove off many more to make the island 9. ( better/ safer) for young puffins.
In the summer of 1973, Kress, a research assistant named Kathleen Blanchard and Robert Noyce, a sympathetic summer neighbor (and the founder of Intel), went to Newfoundland’s Great Island, one of the largest puffin 10. ( enclave/ colonies) in North America. It was the first of 11. ( fewer/ more) than a dozen trips that the Audubon-sponsored “Project Puffin” would make to Great Island.
During each trip, Kress and his team, accompanied by Canadian Wildlife Service staffers, 12. ( climbed/ clambered) up the island’s steep banks and 13. ( put/ plunged) their arms into the long, 14. ( tight/ narrow) burrows that puffins dig in soil. Sometimes they 15. ( pulled/ extracted) a chick, but often they got only a nasty nip from an adult puffin. In total, they collected hundreds of chicks, nestling each in a soup can and storing the cans in carrying cases made for the journey. Making their way past amused customs officials, they flew home to Maine, and, in the wee hours, headed out to Eastern Egg Rock or to nearby Hog Island, where they deposited the chicks in hand-dug burrows.
Part Three- Editing- Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives. There are 20 errors. Write the correct word above the errors.
Kress and his assistants became 1. dutyful puffin parents, camping on the islands and leaving fish inside the burrows twice each day. Nearly all the chicks survived their 2. internal adventure, and by late summer were big enough to fledge. At night, Kress hid behind boulders observing the burrows, sometimes 3. glamping a young puffin as it hopped into the water and 4. puddled out to sea.
Because young puffins spend a few years at sea before returning home to nest, Kress knew he was in for a long wait. Two years passed, three, then four. There was no sign of 5. humecooing puffins.
Kress also knew that the birds were 6. xtremly social, so he decided to make Eastern Egg Rock appear more welcoming. He got a woodcarver named Donald O’Brien to 7. creation some puffin 8. decays, and Kress set them out on the boulders, hoping to fool a 9. life puffin into joining the crowd.
Finally, in June 1977, Kress was steering his powerboat toward the island when a puffin 10. lands in the water nearby—a bird wearing leg bands indicating it had been transplanted from Newfoundland to Eastern Egg Rock two years earlier.
But no puffins nested on Eastern Egg Rock that year, or the next. Or the next. A few of the transplanted birds nested with the existing puffin colony on Matinicus Rock, but not one had accepted Eastern Egg Rock as its home.
Shortly before sunset on July 4, 1981, Kress was scanning Eastern Egg Rock with his telescope when he spotted a puffin, beak full of fish, scrambling into a rocky crevice. The bird hopped out, 11. empty-beak, and flew away, while another adult puffin stood by watching. It was the long-hoped-for evidence of a new chick on the island.
“After 100 years of absence and nine years of working toward this goal,” Kress wrote in the island 12. longbook that evening, “puffins are again nesting at Eastern Egg Rock—a Fourth of July celebration I’ll never forget.”
Today, Eastern Egg Rock hosts more than 100 pairs of nesting puffins. Boatloads of tourists chug out to peer at them through binoculars. Kress and his “puffineers”—biologists and volunteers—have also13.re- introduce puffins to Seal Island, a former Navy bombing range that now serves as a national wildlife refuge. On Matinicus Rock, also a national wildlife refuge, the puffin population has grown to an estimated 350 pairs. Razorbills, a larger, heavier cousin to the puffin, also nest among the boulders; common and Arctic terns nest nearby. In all, a century after Atlantic puffins almost disappeared from the United States, at least 600 pairs now nest along the Maine coast.
Today seabirds around the world benefit from techniques pioneered by Kress and his puffineers. Bird decoys, recorded calls and in some cases, mirrors—so seabirds will see the movements of their own reflections and find the faux colonies more realistic—have been used to restore 49 seabird species in 14 countries, including extremely rare birds such as the tiny Chatham petrel in New Zealand and the Galápagos petrel on the Galápagos Islands.
“A lot of seabird species aren’t willing to come back to islands on their own—they’re not adventurous enough,” says Bernie Tershy, a seabird researcher at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “So in the big picture, Steve’s work is a 14. kritical component of protecting seabirds.” With more and larger breeding colonies, seabirds are more likely to survive disease outbreaks, oil spills and other disasters.
Despite these successes, seabirds are still declining more quickly than any other group of birds, largely because of invasive predators, habitat loss, pollution and baited hooks set out by longline fishing fleets; many species will also likely suffer as climate change leads to rising sea levels and 15. skipier food supplies, says Tershy.
Project Puffin tactics are already deployed against these new threats. For example, the Bermuda petrel lives on a group of tiny, 16. low laying atolls off the Bermuda coast, where it is vulnerable to mere inches of sea-level rise or a single powerful storm. Scientists recently employed Kress’ techniques to relocate petrel chicks to higher ground, a nearby island called Nonsuch where the birds had been driven off by hunters and invasive species. Last summer, a petrel chick hatched and fledged on Nonsuch Island—the first to do so in almost 400 years.
Eastern Egg Rock has a human population of three, 17. minimel electricity and no plumbing. Thousands of gulls swoop over the island, their cries combining into a near-deafening cackle. Terns, their narrow white wings angled like 18. airborn origami sculptures, dive for human heads, the birds’ shrill scolds adding to the cacophony. Underfoot, gangs of 19. chuby tern chicks scuttle in and out of the grass, testing their wings with tentative flaps.
On the boulders that rim the island, more seabirds loaf in the midsummer sun, gathering in cliques to gossip and preen—looking for all the world like an avian cocktail party.
A puffin in 20. fly, stumpy wings whirring, careers in for a landing. Orange feet spread wide, it approaches a boulder, wobbles in the air for an instant, and—pop!—hits the rock, a fish shining in its striped, oversized beak. The puffin hops into a crevice between two rocks, presumably to deliver the fish to a hungry chick, and bounds back up to mingle with other puffins before its next expedition.
Part Four – Comprehension Questions
Each puffin pair raises a single chick. Once the young bird fledges, it heads south, but no one knows exactly where the juveniles spend their first two to three years. Though puffins are speedsters—they can reach 55 miles an hour in flight—their greatest talents are displayed at sea, where they use their feet and wings to maneuver expertly underwater.
“Never let it be said that puffins are awkward,” says Kress, who is director of Project Puffin and affiliated with Cornell University. “They can dive more than 200 feet in water, they can burrow like groundhogs and they can scamper over rocks. They’re all-purpose birds.”
On Eastern Egg Rock, Kress sits in a cramped plywood bird blind on the edge of the island, watching the seabirds toil for their chicks. Even after countless hours hunched behind binoculars, he’s still charmed by his charges.
Kress once imagined that he could one day leave the islands for good, the puffin colonies restored and the project’s work complete. He was wrong.
It became clear that two large gull species—the herring and black-backed gulls that prey on puffin chicks—weren’t going away. Kress had to play God again, this time to give puffins another ally in their battle against gulls: terns.
Terns look delicate and graceful aloft, but they are fighters, known for pugnacious defense of their nests. Working on the island, Kress wears a tam-o’-shanter so that angry terns will swipe at its pompom and not his head. Scott Hall, research coordinator for Project Puffin, wears a baseball cap fitted with bobbing, colorful antennae. Kress believed that the terns, once established, would drive off predatory gulls and act as a “protective umbrella” for the milder-mannered puffins. Unlike gulls, terns don’t prey on puffin eggs and chicks.
He and his colleagues used tern decoys, as they had with puffins, and played recorded tern calls through speakers to attract the birds. Again, their tricks worked: well over 8,400 pairs of terns, including 180 pairs of endangered roseate terns, now nest on the Maine islands where Kress and his team work, up from 1,100 pairs in 1984. But gulls continue to hover on the edges of the islands, waiting for an opportunity to feast on puffin and tern chicks.
Only one species, it seemed, could protect the puffins, the terns and the decades of hard work that Kress and his colleagues had invested: human beings. “People are affecting the ecosystem in all kinds of profound ways, underwater and above water,” Kress says. “Just because we bring something back doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way.”
So each summer, small groups of puffineers live as they have for almost 40 years, in the midst of the seabird colonies on seven islands, where they study the birds and their chicks and defend them against gulls.
On Eastern Egg Rock, Juliet Lamb, a wildlife conservation graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, is back for her fourth summer of living in a tent. She says she thrives on the isolation and even turns down occasional opportunities to visit the mainland for a hot shower. “I’d probably live out here all year if I could,” she adds with a laugh. She and two other researchers spend hours each day in bird blinds arrayed on the perimeter of the island watching puffins and terns feed their chicks. As the supervisor of island operations, Lamb also divvies up cooking and outhouse-cleaning duties, maintains the propane refrigerator and makes sure the island’s single cabin—which serves as kitchen, pantry, lounge and office—stays reasonably uncluttered. When her chores are finally done, she might climb the ladder to the cabin roof, French horn in hand, and practice until sunset.
Some days are decidedly less peaceful. When the biologists arrive in Maine each spring, they go through firearms training at a local firing range, learning to shoot .22-caliber rifles. In 2009, with permission from state and federal wildlife officials, Lamb and her assistants shot six herring and black-backed gulls, hoping to kill a few especially persistent ones and scare off the rest. Because of a worrying decline in roseate terns, they also destroyed the nests of laughing gulls, a smaller, less threatening species that occasionally eats tern eggs and chicks.
Kress and his colleagues are still dreaming up ways to replace themselves as island guardians.They’ve experimented with a “Robo Ranger,” a mechanized mannequin designed to pop up at random intervals and scare gulls off. The souped-up scarecrow wears a yellow slicker and a rubber Arnold Schwarzenegger mask. To teach the gulls that the mannequin is a serious threat, the biologists sometimes dress up in its costume and shoot a few. But mechanical problems have felled the Robo Ranger for now, leaving people as the puffins’ and terns’ only line of defense. The puffineers’ work is never done.
1. What is the puffin’s talent?
2. What is ‘Robo Ranger”?
3. Why must the biologist learn how to shoot?
4. What are the functions of the single cabin on the island?
5. What is the job of a puffineer?
6. What is the predator of the gulls?
7. “They’re all purpose birds” What are the birds? What are their abilities?
8. Why are puffins described as “speedsters”?
Part Five- Writing
Write a letter to your classmate or pen-pal about your favourite pet.
_________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS
Part One
1. collected 2. memorialized 3. shot 4. adorn 5. was known 6. paid
7. banned 8. returned 9. had 10. had become 11. thrived 12. signed
13. entertained 14. went 15. earned
Part Two
1. landed 2. desolate 3. wondered 4. transplant 5. entire 6. collaborated
7. place 8. off 9. safer 10. colonies 11. more 12. clambered 13. plunged
14. narrow 15. extracted
Part Three
1. dutiful 2. international 3. glimpsing 4. paddled 5. homecoming
6. extremely 7. create 8. decoys 9. live 10. landed 11. empty-beaked
12. logbook 13. reintroduced 14. critical 15. skimpier 16. low-lying
17. minimal 18. airborne 19. chubby 20. flight
Atlantic puffins had nearly vanished from the Maine coast until a young biologist defied conventional wisdom to lure them home
By Michelle Nijhuis
Smithsonian magazine, June 2010
Grammar, Vocabulary, Editing and Comprehension Questions
Part One – Grammar-Tenses
Impossibly cute, with pear-shaped bodies, beak and eye markings as bright as clown makeup and a wobbly, slapstick walk, Atlantic puffins were once a common sight along the Maine coast. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries people 1. ________(collect) eggs from puffins and other seabirds for food, a practice 2. __________(memorial) in the names of Eastern Egg Rock and other islands off the coast of New England. Hunters 3. _________(shoot) the plump birds for meat and for feathers to fill pillows and 4. _______(adorn) women’s hats.
By 1901, only a single pair of Atlantic puffins 5. ________(know) to nest in the United States—on Matinicus Rock, a barren island 20 miles from the Maine coast. Wildlife enthusiasts 6. ________(pay) the lighthouse keeper to protect the two birds from hunters.
Things began to change in 1918, when the Migratory Bird Treaty Act 7. _______(ban) the killing of many wild birds in the United States. Slowly, puffins 8. ________(return) to Matinicus Rock.
But not to the rest of Maine. Islands that puffins 9. ________(be) once inhabited 10. _________(be+ become) enemy territory, occupied by colonies of large, aggressive, predatory gulls that 11. ________(thrive) on the debris generated by a growing human population. Though puffins endured elsewhere in their historic range—the North Atlantic coasts of Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Britain—by the 1960s the puffin was all but forgotten in Maine.
In 1964, then 18-year-old Stephen Kress was so smitten with nature that he 12. ______(sign) up to spend the summer washing dishes at a National Audubon Society camp in Connecticut. There Carl Buchheister, president of the Audubon Society, 13. _________(entertain) the kitchen crew with stories about his seabird research on the cliffs of Matinicus Rock. Kress, who had grown up in Columbus, Ohio, 14. ________(go) on to attend Ohio State, where he 15. _______(earn) a degree in zoology; he then worked as a birding instructor in New Brunswick, Canada, where he visited islands overflowing with terns, gulls—and puffins.
Part Two- Vocabulary. Underline the correct word.
When, in 1969, Kress 1. (discovered/landed) his dream job, as an instructor at the Hog Island Audubon Camp on the Maine coast, the islands he visited seemed 2. ( dull/desolate), with few species other than large gulls. He 3. ( reflected/ wondered) if puffins could be transplanted so the birds might once again accept these islands as home. No one had ever tried to 4. ( place/ transplant) a bird species before.
“I just wanted to believe it was possible,” Kress says.
Though a handful of wildlife biologists supported him, others dismissed the idea. There were still plenty of puffins in Iceland, some pointed out; why bother? Others insisted the birds were hard-wired to return only to the place where they had hatched and would never adopt another home. Still others accused Kress of trying to play God.
Kress argued that bringing puffins back to Maine could help the 5. ( special/ entire) species. As for playing God, Kress didn’t see a problem. “We’d been playing the Devil for about 500 years,” says Tony Diamond, a Canadian seabird researcher who has 6. (collaborated/ argued) with Kress for decades. “It was time to join the other side.”
Kress went to work preparing a 7. ( cave/ place) for puffin chicks on Eastern Egg Rock, a seven-acre granite island about eight miles 8. ( on/ off) the coast of Bremen, Maine. Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shot dozens of gulls and drove off many more to make the island 9. ( better/ safer) for young puffins.
In the summer of 1973, Kress, a research assistant named Kathleen Blanchard and Robert Noyce, a sympathetic summer neighbor (and the founder of Intel), went to Newfoundland’s Great Island, one of the largest puffin 10. ( enclave/ colonies) in North America. It was the first of 11. ( fewer/ more) than a dozen trips that the Audubon-sponsored “Project Puffin” would make to Great Island.
During each trip, Kress and his team, accompanied by Canadian Wildlife Service staffers, 12. ( climbed/ clambered) up the island’s steep banks and 13. ( put/ plunged) their arms into the long, 14. ( tight/ narrow) burrows that puffins dig in soil. Sometimes they 15. ( pulled/ extracted) a chick, but often they got only a nasty nip from an adult puffin. In total, they collected hundreds of chicks, nestling each in a soup can and storing the cans in carrying cases made for the journey. Making their way past amused customs officials, they flew home to Maine, and, in the wee hours, headed out to Eastern Egg Rock or to nearby Hog Island, where they deposited the chicks in hand-dug burrows.
Part Three- Editing- Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives. There are 20 errors. Write the correct word above the errors.
Kress and his assistants became 1. dutyful puffin parents, camping on the islands and leaving fish inside the burrows twice each day. Nearly all the chicks survived their 2. internal adventure, and by late summer were big enough to fledge. At night, Kress hid behind boulders observing the burrows, sometimes 3. glamping a young puffin as it hopped into the water and 4. puddled out to sea.
Because young puffins spend a few years at sea before returning home to nest, Kress knew he was in for a long wait. Two years passed, three, then four. There was no sign of 5. humecooing puffins.
Kress also knew that the birds were 6. xtremly social, so he decided to make Eastern Egg Rock appear more welcoming. He got a woodcarver named Donald O’Brien to 7. creation some puffin 8. decays, and Kress set them out on the boulders, hoping to fool a 9. life puffin into joining the crowd.
Finally, in June 1977, Kress was steering his powerboat toward the island when a puffin 10. lands in the water nearby—a bird wearing leg bands indicating it had been transplanted from Newfoundland to Eastern Egg Rock two years earlier.
But no puffins nested on Eastern Egg Rock that year, or the next. Or the next. A few of the transplanted birds nested with the existing puffin colony on Matinicus Rock, but not one had accepted Eastern Egg Rock as its home.
Shortly before sunset on July 4, 1981, Kress was scanning Eastern Egg Rock with his telescope when he spotted a puffin, beak full of fish, scrambling into a rocky crevice. The bird hopped out, 11. empty-beak, and flew away, while another adult puffin stood by watching. It was the long-hoped-for evidence of a new chick on the island.
“After 100 years of absence and nine years of working toward this goal,” Kress wrote in the island 12. longbook that evening, “puffins are again nesting at Eastern Egg Rock—a Fourth of July celebration I’ll never forget.”
Today, Eastern Egg Rock hosts more than 100 pairs of nesting puffins. Boatloads of tourists chug out to peer at them through binoculars. Kress and his “puffineers”—biologists and volunteers—have also13.re- introduce puffins to Seal Island, a former Navy bombing range that now serves as a national wildlife refuge. On Matinicus Rock, also a national wildlife refuge, the puffin population has grown to an estimated 350 pairs. Razorbills, a larger, heavier cousin to the puffin, also nest among the boulders; common and Arctic terns nest nearby. In all, a century after Atlantic puffins almost disappeared from the United States, at least 600 pairs now nest along the Maine coast.
Today seabirds around the world benefit from techniques pioneered by Kress and his puffineers. Bird decoys, recorded calls and in some cases, mirrors—so seabirds will see the movements of their own reflections and find the faux colonies more realistic—have been used to restore 49 seabird species in 14 countries, including extremely rare birds such as the tiny Chatham petrel in New Zealand and the Galápagos petrel on the Galápagos Islands.
“A lot of seabird species aren’t willing to come back to islands on their own—they’re not adventurous enough,” says Bernie Tershy, a seabird researcher at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “So in the big picture, Steve’s work is a 14. kritical component of protecting seabirds.” With more and larger breeding colonies, seabirds are more likely to survive disease outbreaks, oil spills and other disasters.
Despite these successes, seabirds are still declining more quickly than any other group of birds, largely because of invasive predators, habitat loss, pollution and baited hooks set out by longline fishing fleets; many species will also likely suffer as climate change leads to rising sea levels and 15. skipier food supplies, says Tershy.
Project Puffin tactics are already deployed against these new threats. For example, the Bermuda petrel lives on a group of tiny, 16. low laying atolls off the Bermuda coast, where it is vulnerable to mere inches of sea-level rise or a single powerful storm. Scientists recently employed Kress’ techniques to relocate petrel chicks to higher ground, a nearby island called Nonsuch where the birds had been driven off by hunters and invasive species. Last summer, a petrel chick hatched and fledged on Nonsuch Island—the first to do so in almost 400 years.
Eastern Egg Rock has a human population of three, 17. minimel electricity and no plumbing. Thousands of gulls swoop over the island, their cries combining into a near-deafening cackle. Terns, their narrow white wings angled like 18. airborn origami sculptures, dive for human heads, the birds’ shrill scolds adding to the cacophony. Underfoot, gangs of 19. chuby tern chicks scuttle in and out of the grass, testing their wings with tentative flaps.
On the boulders that rim the island, more seabirds loaf in the midsummer sun, gathering in cliques to gossip and preen—looking for all the world like an avian cocktail party.
A puffin in 20. fly, stumpy wings whirring, careers in for a landing. Orange feet spread wide, it approaches a boulder, wobbles in the air for an instant, and—pop!—hits the rock, a fish shining in its striped, oversized beak. The puffin hops into a crevice between two rocks, presumably to deliver the fish to a hungry chick, and bounds back up to mingle with other puffins before its next expedition.
Part Four – Comprehension Questions
Each puffin pair raises a single chick. Once the young bird fledges, it heads south, but no one knows exactly where the juveniles spend their first two to three years. Though puffins are speedsters—they can reach 55 miles an hour in flight—their greatest talents are displayed at sea, where they use their feet and wings to maneuver expertly underwater.
“Never let it be said that puffins are awkward,” says Kress, who is director of Project Puffin and affiliated with Cornell University. “They can dive more than 200 feet in water, they can burrow like groundhogs and they can scamper over rocks. They’re all-purpose birds.”
On Eastern Egg Rock, Kress sits in a cramped plywood bird blind on the edge of the island, watching the seabirds toil for their chicks. Even after countless hours hunched behind binoculars, he’s still charmed by his charges.
Kress once imagined that he could one day leave the islands for good, the puffin colonies restored and the project’s work complete. He was wrong.
It became clear that two large gull species—the herring and black-backed gulls that prey on puffin chicks—weren’t going away. Kress had to play God again, this time to give puffins another ally in their battle against gulls: terns.
Terns look delicate and graceful aloft, but they are fighters, known for pugnacious defense of their nests. Working on the island, Kress wears a tam-o’-shanter so that angry terns will swipe at its pompom and not his head. Scott Hall, research coordinator for Project Puffin, wears a baseball cap fitted with bobbing, colorful antennae. Kress believed that the terns, once established, would drive off predatory gulls and act as a “protective umbrella” for the milder-mannered puffins. Unlike gulls, terns don’t prey on puffin eggs and chicks.
He and his colleagues used tern decoys, as they had with puffins, and played recorded tern calls through speakers to attract the birds. Again, their tricks worked: well over 8,400 pairs of terns, including 180 pairs of endangered roseate terns, now nest on the Maine islands where Kress and his team work, up from 1,100 pairs in 1984. But gulls continue to hover on the edges of the islands, waiting for an opportunity to feast on puffin and tern chicks.
Only one species, it seemed, could protect the puffins, the terns and the decades of hard work that Kress and his colleagues had invested: human beings. “People are affecting the ecosystem in all kinds of profound ways, underwater and above water,” Kress says. “Just because we bring something back doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way.”
So each summer, small groups of puffineers live as they have for almost 40 years, in the midst of the seabird colonies on seven islands, where they study the birds and their chicks and defend them against gulls.
On Eastern Egg Rock, Juliet Lamb, a wildlife conservation graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, is back for her fourth summer of living in a tent. She says she thrives on the isolation and even turns down occasional opportunities to visit the mainland for a hot shower. “I’d probably live out here all year if I could,” she adds with a laugh. She and two other researchers spend hours each day in bird blinds arrayed on the perimeter of the island watching puffins and terns feed their chicks. As the supervisor of island operations, Lamb also divvies up cooking and outhouse-cleaning duties, maintains the propane refrigerator and makes sure the island’s single cabin—which serves as kitchen, pantry, lounge and office—stays reasonably uncluttered. When her chores are finally done, she might climb the ladder to the cabin roof, French horn in hand, and practice until sunset.
Some days are decidedly less peaceful. When the biologists arrive in Maine each spring, they go through firearms training at a local firing range, learning to shoot .22-caliber rifles. In 2009, with permission from state and federal wildlife officials, Lamb and her assistants shot six herring and black-backed gulls, hoping to kill a few especially persistent ones and scare off the rest. Because of a worrying decline in roseate terns, they also destroyed the nests of laughing gulls, a smaller, less threatening species that occasionally eats tern eggs and chicks.
Kress and his colleagues are still dreaming up ways to replace themselves as island guardians.They’ve experimented with a “Robo Ranger,” a mechanized mannequin designed to pop up at random intervals and scare gulls off. The souped-up scarecrow wears a yellow slicker and a rubber Arnold Schwarzenegger mask. To teach the gulls that the mannequin is a serious threat, the biologists sometimes dress up in its costume and shoot a few. But mechanical problems have felled the Robo Ranger for now, leaving people as the puffins’ and terns’ only line of defense. The puffineers’ work is never done.
1. What is the puffin’s talent?
2. What is ‘Robo Ranger”?
3. Why must the biologist learn how to shoot?
4. What are the functions of the single cabin on the island?
5. What is the job of a puffineer?
6. What is the predator of the gulls?
7. “They’re all purpose birds” What are the birds? What are their abilities?
8. Why are puffins described as “speedsters”?
Part Five- Writing
Write a letter to your classmate or pen-pal about your favourite pet.
_________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS
Part One
1. collected 2. memorialized 3. shot 4. adorn 5. was known 6. paid
7. banned 8. returned 9. had 10. had become 11. thrived 12. signed
13. entertained 14. went 15. earned
Part Two
1. landed 2. desolate 3. wondered 4. transplant 5. entire 6. collaborated
7. place 8. off 9. safer 10. colonies 11. more 12. clambered 13. plunged
14. narrow 15. extracted
Part Three
1. dutiful 2. international 3. glimpsing 4. paddled 5. homecoming
6. extremely 7. create 8. decoys 9. live 10. landed 11. empty-beaked
12. logbook 13. reintroduced 14. critical 15. skimpier 16. low-lying
17. minimal 18. airborne 19. chubby 20. flight
CAMPING
Name _________________( ) Date _______
READING ARTICLE, COMPREHENSION, VOCABULARY and WRITING
COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
1. Why is camping a favourite pastime?
2. Where are the places we can go camping in Singapore/
3. What are the activities students can enjoy during the school holidays?
______________________________________________________
ITE Simei student Nur Safura (centre), 19, playing a game of Twister with her cousins at Pasir Ris Park. Their extended family of more than 50 members pitch 12 tents when they go camping. Tasks such as food, games and trash duty are split up among the family, the youngest of whom is two years old and the oldest is 65. -- ST PHOTO: VERONICA KOH
Instead of letting his seven-year-old twin sons stay at home playing computer games, Mr Ivan Lim has got them clicking with nature. He takes them camping at East Coast Park.
Along with his wife and parents, he heads to the park once a month to show the boys how to pitch a tent, cycle and swim too.
Mr Lim, a 36-year-old project director who lives in a condominium unit in Yew Tee, says: 'It started out as a family outing earlier this year, but my kids had so much fun that we made it a routine.
'I get them to try new activities and they're also picking up survival skills.'
His wife Esther, 35, an accounts manager, says: 'Our jobs prevent us from taking long vacations. Camping provides a quick getaway to spend time with the family.'
Increasingly, more Singaporeans are in Mr Lim's camp, as camping takes off. Since April last year, the National Parks has allocated 21,000 camping permits to campers, which works out to 57 permits a day.
Suppliers of camping equipment which LifeStyle spoke to agreed that camping is becoming more popular.
Sports and camping equipment shops Adventure 21 and Camper's Corner reported an increase in sales in the past five years. Sports Connection's camping gear sales have risen 100 per cent from 2008 to last year. The shops declined to give figures.
Campers have a choice of heading to the parks at East Coast, Pasir Ris, West Coast and Changi Beach if they have a permit. They can pitch a tent without a permit on Pulau Ubin, although they must inform the police.
Go to East Coast Park over the weekend and you will see a sea of tents along the shoreline, sometimes numbering up to 50.
However, Singapore-style camping is not exactly roughing it out. Camping areas come with stores and toilet facilities.
Some campers bring their own food from home or go to nearby eateries, especially if they are at East Coast Park where there are plenty of choices, or Changi Beach Park, where Changi Village Food Centre is a 15-minute walk away.
Today's tents are a breeze to set up compared to old-style heavy canvas, multiple tent poles and hammering in pegs.
Camping instructor Winnie Tan, 19, who goes camping at East Coast Park, says: 'My friends and I can go camping and not worry about food or forgetting a toothbrush because we know the food centre and convenience store is nearby.'
Camping permits here are free, which appeals to bigger groups on a budget.
When it comes to organising a camping trip, no one does it quite like sales coordinator Suzi Sairi, 25, and her extended family of more than 50 members. The youngest is two years old and the oldest, 65. Pitching 12 tents at a go, her family shares tasks such as food, trash duty and games. They have a Facebook group for their camping trips at various parks.
She said: 'For a big family like ours, camping is less restrictive than being cooped up in a chalet. There may be problems such as rainy weather, but it's going through these experiences that helps our family to bond.'
Marketing coordinator Nur Khamisah Dawood, 51, is also into family camping. She goes with her extended family of over 30 relatives.
She says: 'Chalets cannot fit everyone and overseas holidays are expensive. Camping is a vacation at a lower cost.'
The activities of Pasir Ris Park spurred engineer Tan Choon Liang to take his two daughters, aged seven and 10, camping instead of spending the weekends at their five-room flat in Hougang. They enjoy playing at the park's extensive playground and feeding the ponies at the park stable.
Mr Tan, 45, said: 'Instead of just lying around in a tent, it's good that the park has attractions to keep my children occupied.'
For businessman Terrence Lim and his wife Fanny, it is never too early to start camping. They take their 16-month-old son Elliot every weekend to Pasir Ris Park, pitching tent near the beach so that he can play in the sand.
Mr Lim, 37, said: 'We don't want him to merely watch TV, so we started this as soon as he could walk.'
Camping is also popular for couples seeking a romantic getaway.
Student Veronica Neo, 19, goes camping with her boyfriend whenever they can. They pack a picnic and spend the night at the beach. She said: 'People always associate camping with roughing it out, but they forget that the beach is a very romantic place as well, especially at night.'
Once a fortnight, pest control operator Azman Sahlan and his wife head to a remote area of Pasir Ris Park, where they pitch a tent and fish together.
Mr Sahlan, 40, said: 'It's just us, the sea and the fish. It gives us a chance to spend time together without the distractions of the outside world.'
Some, such as 18-year-old student Adeline Wan, pitch a tent just to study. 'It's a refreshing change from studying at home or at the library,' she said.
Student Melissa Chua, 20, combines her love for camping with her passion for photography. Once every few months, she camps at Changi Beach Park and spends the day taking photographs.
'I take whatever captures my eye... aeroplanes, boats, the sea, the sunrise.'
Some campers venture beyond Singapore and actually rough it out.
Once a month, insurance agent Ngoh Seh Suan, 31, goes on an overnight cycling trip with his friends to Johor, covering up to 220km and going as far as Kota Tinggi and Jason Bay.
They take their own stove and mess tin to cook, buying oil and eggs from nearby villages. He relies on a GPS device to find his way around.
Adventures have included having to hide food from wild boars.
'It's hard to have a quiet getaway in Singapore as the camping areas are overcrowded. I enjoy discovering new places overseas and the challenge of seeking out good camping spots.
Apr 25, 2010
Pitch your tent here
Campers need to apply for a camping permit, which are available from an AXS machine or go to www.axs.com.sg
Designated camping areas
• Changi Beach Park: between Carpark 1 and 4 and Carpark 6 and 7
• East Coast Park: Areas D (near Carpark D) and G (near Carpark G)
• West Coast Park: Area 3 (near Carpark 3)
• Pasir Ris Park: Area 1 (near Carpark A) and 3 (near Carpark D)
• Sisters' Island and Pulau Hantu at Sentosa: Overnight campers have to notify the executive management of Sentosa by sending an e-mail to administrator@sentosa.com.sg for a camping permit.
• Jelutong, Noordin and Maman Beaches at Pulau Ubin: Camping permit not required, but campers should inform officers at the Pulau Ubin Police Post on the day that they are camping.
Apr 25, 2010
Some types of tents
I-TENT (BIBLER'S RANGE)
This single-layer two-man tent is made of special ToddTex fabric that can withstand strong winds and storms.
The fabric is resistant to the sun's ultraviolet rays and is coated with a finishing that prevents moisture build-up. Weighing only 2.2kg, it is suitable for mountaineering and backpacking. Comes with setting-up instructions.
Price: $1,084.30
From: Camper's Corner Outdoor Outfitters (tel: 6337-4743), #01-13 Capitol Building, 11 Stamford Road
MTB
This two-man single-layer tent is made of aluminised waterproof polyester and is great for cycling trips as it is lightweight and easy to set up. Comes with a mosquito net and setting-up instructions.
Price: $209.90
From: Adventure 21 (tel: 6535-0232), #02-03A Chinatown Point, 133 New Bridge Road
OVERLAND SIX-MAN TENT
This has two openings and two windows, with a waterproof flysheet. Has insect-free netting that is non-see-through for privacy. Suitable for the beach and comes with setting-up instructions.
Price: $139
From: Sports Connection at Compass Point, Causeway Point, Shaw Leisure Gallery and West Mall
CARREFOUR TWO-MAN TENT
Just nice for a couple, this tent is suitable for beach use but is not waterproof. Comes with setting-up instructions.
Price: $12.90
From: Carrefour at Suntec City and Plaza Singapura
_____________________________________________________________________
.
Vocabulary
Underline the correct word.
1. Mr Sahlan, 40, said: 'It's just us, the sea and the fish. It gives us a A. (mistake/ disadvantage/ chance ) to spend time together without the B. (attractions/distractions/ protection) of the outside world.'
2. Student Melissa Chua, 20, combines her love for camping with her C. (talent/ mastery/ passion) for photography. Once every few months, she camps at Changi Beach Park and spends the day taking photographs.
'I take whatever D. (captivates/ motivates/captures) my eye... aeroplanes, boats, the sea, the sunrise.'
3. Camping is also E. (unpopular/ popular/ liked) for couples seeking a F. (standard/ easy/ romantic) getaway.
Student Veronica Neo, 19, goes camping with her boyfriend whenever they can. They pack a G . (attire/party/picnic) and spend the night at the beach. She said: 'People always H. ( connect/ rebate/associate) camping with I. (living/ writing/ roughing) it out, but they forget that the beach is a very romantic place as well, especially at J. (day/ dawn/night).'
___________________________________________________________
WRITING
1. Write a composition on A CAMPING TRIP.
2. Write a letter to you pen pal, inviting him/her to a camping trip.
_________________________________________________________
ANSWERS
A. chance B. distactions C. passion D. captures E. popular F. romantic G. picnic H. associate I. Roughing. J. night
READING ARTICLE, COMPREHENSION, VOCABULARY and WRITING
COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
1. Why is camping a favourite pastime?
2. Where are the places we can go camping in Singapore/
3. What are the activities students can enjoy during the school holidays?
______________________________________________________
ITE Simei student Nur Safura (centre), 19, playing a game of Twister with her cousins at Pasir Ris Park. Their extended family of more than 50 members pitch 12 tents when they go camping. Tasks such as food, games and trash duty are split up among the family, the youngest of whom is two years old and the oldest is 65. -- ST PHOTO: VERONICA KOH
Instead of letting his seven-year-old twin sons stay at home playing computer games, Mr Ivan Lim has got them clicking with nature. He takes them camping at East Coast Park.
Along with his wife and parents, he heads to the park once a month to show the boys how to pitch a tent, cycle and swim too.
Mr Lim, a 36-year-old project director who lives in a condominium unit in Yew Tee, says: 'It started out as a family outing earlier this year, but my kids had so much fun that we made it a routine.
'I get them to try new activities and they're also picking up survival skills.'
His wife Esther, 35, an accounts manager, says: 'Our jobs prevent us from taking long vacations. Camping provides a quick getaway to spend time with the family.'
Increasingly, more Singaporeans are in Mr Lim's camp, as camping takes off. Since April last year, the National Parks has allocated 21,000 camping permits to campers, which works out to 57 permits a day.
Suppliers of camping equipment which LifeStyle spoke to agreed that camping is becoming more popular.
Sports and camping equipment shops Adventure 21 and Camper's Corner reported an increase in sales in the past five years. Sports Connection's camping gear sales have risen 100 per cent from 2008 to last year. The shops declined to give figures.
Campers have a choice of heading to the parks at East Coast, Pasir Ris, West Coast and Changi Beach if they have a permit. They can pitch a tent without a permit on Pulau Ubin, although they must inform the police.
Go to East Coast Park over the weekend and you will see a sea of tents along the shoreline, sometimes numbering up to 50.
However, Singapore-style camping is not exactly roughing it out. Camping areas come with stores and toilet facilities.
Some campers bring their own food from home or go to nearby eateries, especially if they are at East Coast Park where there are plenty of choices, or Changi Beach Park, where Changi Village Food Centre is a 15-minute walk away.
Today's tents are a breeze to set up compared to old-style heavy canvas, multiple tent poles and hammering in pegs.
Camping instructor Winnie Tan, 19, who goes camping at East Coast Park, says: 'My friends and I can go camping and not worry about food or forgetting a toothbrush because we know the food centre and convenience store is nearby.'
Camping permits here are free, which appeals to bigger groups on a budget.
When it comes to organising a camping trip, no one does it quite like sales coordinator Suzi Sairi, 25, and her extended family of more than 50 members. The youngest is two years old and the oldest, 65. Pitching 12 tents at a go, her family shares tasks such as food, trash duty and games. They have a Facebook group for their camping trips at various parks.
She said: 'For a big family like ours, camping is less restrictive than being cooped up in a chalet. There may be problems such as rainy weather, but it's going through these experiences that helps our family to bond.'
Marketing coordinator Nur Khamisah Dawood, 51, is also into family camping. She goes with her extended family of over 30 relatives.
She says: 'Chalets cannot fit everyone and overseas holidays are expensive. Camping is a vacation at a lower cost.'
The activities of Pasir Ris Park spurred engineer Tan Choon Liang to take his two daughters, aged seven and 10, camping instead of spending the weekends at their five-room flat in Hougang. They enjoy playing at the park's extensive playground and feeding the ponies at the park stable.
Mr Tan, 45, said: 'Instead of just lying around in a tent, it's good that the park has attractions to keep my children occupied.'
For businessman Terrence Lim and his wife Fanny, it is never too early to start camping. They take their 16-month-old son Elliot every weekend to Pasir Ris Park, pitching tent near the beach so that he can play in the sand.
Mr Lim, 37, said: 'We don't want him to merely watch TV, so we started this as soon as he could walk.'
Camping is also popular for couples seeking a romantic getaway.
Student Veronica Neo, 19, goes camping with her boyfriend whenever they can. They pack a picnic and spend the night at the beach. She said: 'People always associate camping with roughing it out, but they forget that the beach is a very romantic place as well, especially at night.'
Once a fortnight, pest control operator Azman Sahlan and his wife head to a remote area of Pasir Ris Park, where they pitch a tent and fish together.
Mr Sahlan, 40, said: 'It's just us, the sea and the fish. It gives us a chance to spend time together without the distractions of the outside world.'
Some, such as 18-year-old student Adeline Wan, pitch a tent just to study. 'It's a refreshing change from studying at home or at the library,' she said.
Student Melissa Chua, 20, combines her love for camping with her passion for photography. Once every few months, she camps at Changi Beach Park and spends the day taking photographs.
'I take whatever captures my eye... aeroplanes, boats, the sea, the sunrise.'
Some campers venture beyond Singapore and actually rough it out.
Once a month, insurance agent Ngoh Seh Suan, 31, goes on an overnight cycling trip with his friends to Johor, covering up to 220km and going as far as Kota Tinggi and Jason Bay.
They take their own stove and mess tin to cook, buying oil and eggs from nearby villages. He relies on a GPS device to find his way around.
Adventures have included having to hide food from wild boars.
'It's hard to have a quiet getaway in Singapore as the camping areas are overcrowded. I enjoy discovering new places overseas and the challenge of seeking out good camping spots.
Apr 25, 2010
Pitch your tent here
Campers need to apply for a camping permit, which are available from an AXS machine or go to www.axs.com.sg
Designated camping areas
• Changi Beach Park: between Carpark 1 and 4 and Carpark 6 and 7
• East Coast Park: Areas D (near Carpark D) and G (near Carpark G)
• West Coast Park: Area 3 (near Carpark 3)
• Pasir Ris Park: Area 1 (near Carpark A) and 3 (near Carpark D)
• Sisters' Island and Pulau Hantu at Sentosa: Overnight campers have to notify the executive management of Sentosa by sending an e-mail to administrator@sentosa.com.sg for a camping permit.
• Jelutong, Noordin and Maman Beaches at Pulau Ubin: Camping permit not required, but campers should inform officers at the Pulau Ubin Police Post on the day that they are camping.
Apr 25, 2010
Some types of tents
I-TENT (BIBLER'S RANGE)
This single-layer two-man tent is made of special ToddTex fabric that can withstand strong winds and storms.
The fabric is resistant to the sun's ultraviolet rays and is coated with a finishing that prevents moisture build-up. Weighing only 2.2kg, it is suitable for mountaineering and backpacking. Comes with setting-up instructions.
Price: $1,084.30
From: Camper's Corner Outdoor Outfitters (tel: 6337-4743), #01-13 Capitol Building, 11 Stamford Road
MTB
This two-man single-layer tent is made of aluminised waterproof polyester and is great for cycling trips as it is lightweight and easy to set up. Comes with a mosquito net and setting-up instructions.
Price: $209.90
From: Adventure 21 (tel: 6535-0232), #02-03A Chinatown Point, 133 New Bridge Road
OVERLAND SIX-MAN TENT
This has two openings and two windows, with a waterproof flysheet. Has insect-free netting that is non-see-through for privacy. Suitable for the beach and comes with setting-up instructions.
Price: $139
From: Sports Connection at Compass Point, Causeway Point, Shaw Leisure Gallery and West Mall
CARREFOUR TWO-MAN TENT
Just nice for a couple, this tent is suitable for beach use but is not waterproof. Comes with setting-up instructions.
Price: $12.90
From: Carrefour at Suntec City and Plaza Singapura
_____________________________________________________________________
.
Vocabulary
Underline the correct word.
1. Mr Sahlan, 40, said: 'It's just us, the sea and the fish. It gives us a A. (mistake/ disadvantage/ chance ) to spend time together without the B. (attractions/distractions/ protection) of the outside world.'
2. Student Melissa Chua, 20, combines her love for camping with her C. (talent/ mastery/ passion) for photography. Once every few months, she camps at Changi Beach Park and spends the day taking photographs.
'I take whatever D. (captivates/ motivates/captures) my eye... aeroplanes, boats, the sea, the sunrise.'
3. Camping is also E. (unpopular/ popular/ liked) for couples seeking a F. (standard/ easy/ romantic) getaway.
Student Veronica Neo, 19, goes camping with her boyfriend whenever they can. They pack a G . (attire/party/picnic) and spend the night at the beach. She said: 'People always H. ( connect/ rebate/associate) camping with I. (living/ writing/ roughing) it out, but they forget that the beach is a very romantic place as well, especially at J. (day/ dawn/night).'
___________________________________________________________
WRITING
1. Write a composition on A CAMPING TRIP.
2. Write a letter to you pen pal, inviting him/her to a camping trip.
_________________________________________________________
ANSWERS
A. chance B. distactions C. passion D. captures E. popular F. romantic G. picnic H. associate I. Roughing. J. night
CURSE OF THE BLACK GOLD
Curse of the Black Gold : Hope and betrayal on the Niger Delta
By Tom O'Neill
National Geographic staff
February 2007
PART ONE
VOCABULARY CLOZE and COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
Helping words
taints self-sufficient get importing fire poor possible wrong slums smoke potholes beggars huts better poorer surviving sabotage kidnap shacks outside nothing grievances poisoning without scarce stains siphon children adults earnings populous recent report twist lives ruin scarce
Oil fouls everything in southern Nigeria. It spills from the pipelines, 1. ________ soil and water. It 2. _________ the hands of politicians and generals, who 3. ________ off its profits. It 4. __________ the ambitions of the young, who will try anything to scoop up a share of the liquid riches—fi 5. __________ a gun, 6. _________ a pipeline, 7. __________ a foreigner.
Nigeria had all the makings of an uplifting tale: 8. __________ African nation 9. _________ with enormous sudden wealth. Visions of prosperity rose with the same force as the oil that first gushed from the Niger Delta's marshy ground in 1956. The world market craved delta crude, a "sweet," low-sulfur liquid called Bonny Light, easily refined into gasoline and diesel. By the mid-1970s, Nigeria had joined OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), and the government's budget bulged with petrodollars.
Everything looked 9. __________—but everything went 10. _________.
Dense, garbage-heaped 11. ___________stretch for miles. Choking black 12. ___________ from an open-air slaughterhouse rolls over housetops. Streets are cratered with 13. __________ and ruts. Vicious gangs roam school grounds. Peddlers and 14. __________ rush up to vehicles stalled in gas lines. This is Port Harcourt, Nigeria's oil hub, capital of Rivers state, smack-dab in the middle of oil reserves bigger than the United States' and Mexico's combined. Port Harcourt should gleam; instead, it rots.
Beyond the city, within the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, and pipeline channels that vein the delta—one of the world's largest wetlands—exists a netherworld. Villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled 15. ____________ and rusty 16. __________. Groups of hungry, half-naked 17. __________ and sullen, idle 18. __________ wander dirt paths. There is no electricity, no clean water, no medicine, no schools. Fishing nets hang dry; dugout canoes sit unused on muddy banks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares, and the stripping away of mangroves for pipelines have killed off fish.
Nigeria has been subverted by the very thing that gave it promise—oil, which accounts for 95 percent of the country's export 19. __________ and 80 percent of its 20. _________. In 1960, agricultural products such as palm oil and cacao beans made up nearly all Nigeria's exports; today, they barely register as trade items, and Africa's most 21. ___________ country, with 130 million people, has gone from being 22. ___________ in food to 23. ____________ more than it produces. Because its refineries are constantly breaking down, oil-rich Nigeria must also import the bulk of its fuel. But even then, gas stations are often closed for want of supply. A 24. ___________ United Nations 25. _________ shows that in quality of life, Nigeria rates below all other major oil nations, from Libya to Indonesia. Its annual per capita income of $1,400 is less than that of Senegal, which exports mainly fish and nuts. The World Bank categorizes Nigeria as a "fragile state," beset by risk of armed conflict, epidemic disease, and failed governance.
From a potential model nation, Nigeria has become a dangerous country, addicted to oil money, with people increasingly willing to turn to corruption, sabotage, and murder to get a fix of the wealth. The cruelest 26. ________ is that half a century of oil extraction in the delta has failed to make the 27. ___________ of the people 28. __________. Instead, they are 29. _________ still, and hopeless.
"It's not fair," Felix James Harry muttered in a meetinghouse in the village of Finima on the western end of the island, close to the oil and gas complex. "We can hardly catch fish anymore. 30. ______________ is very hard." Harry, a 30-year-old father of two children, should have been in his canoe this afternoon, throwing out nets to snare crayfish and sardines. But he was sitting in an airless concrete-block shelter with half a dozen other fishermen, none of whom had much to do.
Houses in the new village are tightly packed, leaving little room for gardens. Windows look out on walls. In this claustrophobic setting, the men talked about nature. "The forest where the gas plant is protected us from the east wind," Solomon David, the community chairman, said. "Now, the rain and wind 31. ___________ our thatched roofs every three months. They lasted more than twice as long before." Another fisherman mentioned how construction and increased ship traffic changed local wave patterns, causing shore erosion and forcing fish into deeper water. "We would need a 55-horsepower engine to get to those places." No one in the room could afford such an engine.
The meetinghouse had no electricity, but a battery-powered wall clock, the only decoration, showed that another day was ebbing away. Forced to give up fishing, the young men of the village put their hope in landing a job with the oil industry. But offers are 32. _________. "People from the 33. __________ get all the jobs," Harry said, alluding to members of Nigeria's majority ethnic groups—the Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and Fulani—who are the country's political and economic elite. "We have diploma holders, but they have 34. ___________ to do."
35. __________ crowded the dim room. Bernard Cosmos, a strapping young man in a striped polo shirt, spoke out: "I have a degree in petrochemical engineering from Rivers State University in Port Harcourt. I've applied many times with the oil companies for a good job. It's always no. They tell me that I can work in an oil field as an unskilled laborer but not as an engineer. I have no money to get other training."
"I can say this," Osuoka said firmly. "Nigeria was a much better place 36. __________ oil."
Optimism is as 37. __________ as blue sky in the sodden delta. "Everyone was sure they would be blessed with the coming of the black gold and live as well as people in other parts of the world," said Patrick Amaopusanibo, a retired businessman who now farms near the village of Oloama. He had to speak loudly to compete with the "black noise," the hissing and roaring of a gas flare near his cassava field. "But we have nothing. I feel cheated."
Nigeria's oil money won't keep coming, of course—perhaps another 40 years, the experts say. Natural gas is a fallback. Nigeria's reserves are estimated at 184 trillion cubic feet (five trillion cubic meters), good for an estimated 240 years of production at current levels. In the meantime, Antony Goldman says, "The government is following a simple plan for oil extraction - get everything out, as much as possible.”
FISH
Isaac Osuoka remembers the first time he saw frozen fish. It was the late 1970s, and he was five. A peddler caused a stir as he entered Osuoka's delta town of Oeliabi (now Akinima) with a carton of what he called ice fish. "We never had fish brought in from outside," said Osuoka, who now lives in Port Harcourt. "We had no idea what frozen fish meant. There were rumors that this fish was kept in a mortuary."
Frozen fish was a harbinger of the changes that would traumatize Osuoka's community. "As a boy, I could stroll to the rivers or back swamps with a rod and a net and come back with enough fish to feed my family," he recalled. "There was usually enough left over to sell, providing income for us to go to school." This bounty would not survive the coming of oil. Leaks from pipelines and wells, and the building of roads and canals, have disrupted the wetlands. "The degree and rate of degradation," the UN report warns, "are pushing the delta towards ecological disaster."
"Today, there is not a single person in my community you could describe as a fisherman. We depend almost totally on frozen fish." At market stalls, a piece of frozen croaker or mackerel, most of it imported, goes for almost a dollar, unaffordable for most villagers.
Comprehension Questions
1. What does “this bounty” refers to?
2. “The degree and rate of degradation” What does this refer to?
3. Explain why the people depend on frozen fish for food?
4. Explain why fish is unaffordable in the village?
5. What is “ice fish” ?
Vocabulary
Rank the following words according to its degree of seriousness on the line scale below:.
WORDS related to disaster
Disaster degradation traumatize ebbing blessed bounty claustrophobic corruption sabotage hopeless murder
Scale:
Positive average very negative
_________________________________________________
WORDS related to Sound
Groan hissed thundered roared mumbled spoke
Scale:
Positive average very negative
____________________________________________________
ANSWERS
1.poisoning 2. stains 3.siphon 4. taints 5.fire 6. sabotage 7. kidnap 8. poor 9.possible 10.wrong 11. slums 12.smoke 13. potholes 14. beggars 15.huts 16. shacks 17. children 18. adults 19. earnings 20. populous 21. self-sufficient 22.importing 23. recent 24. report 25. twist 26. lives 27. better 28. poorer 29. surviving 30. ruin 31. scarce 32. outside 33. nothing 34. grievances 36. without 37. scarce 38. get
By Tom O'Neill
National Geographic staff
February 2007
PART ONE
VOCABULARY CLOZE and COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
Helping words
taints self-sufficient get importing fire poor possible wrong slums smoke potholes beggars huts better poorer surviving sabotage kidnap shacks outside nothing grievances poisoning without scarce stains siphon children adults earnings populous recent report twist lives ruin scarce
Oil fouls everything in southern Nigeria. It spills from the pipelines, 1. ________ soil and water. It 2. _________ the hands of politicians and generals, who 3. ________ off its profits. It 4. __________ the ambitions of the young, who will try anything to scoop up a share of the liquid riches—fi 5. __________ a gun, 6. _________ a pipeline, 7. __________ a foreigner.
Nigeria had all the makings of an uplifting tale: 8. __________ African nation 9. _________ with enormous sudden wealth. Visions of prosperity rose with the same force as the oil that first gushed from the Niger Delta's marshy ground in 1956. The world market craved delta crude, a "sweet," low-sulfur liquid called Bonny Light, easily refined into gasoline and diesel. By the mid-1970s, Nigeria had joined OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), and the government's budget bulged with petrodollars.
Everything looked 9. __________—but everything went 10. _________.
Dense, garbage-heaped 11. ___________stretch for miles. Choking black 12. ___________ from an open-air slaughterhouse rolls over housetops. Streets are cratered with 13. __________ and ruts. Vicious gangs roam school grounds. Peddlers and 14. __________ rush up to vehicles stalled in gas lines. This is Port Harcourt, Nigeria's oil hub, capital of Rivers state, smack-dab in the middle of oil reserves bigger than the United States' and Mexico's combined. Port Harcourt should gleam; instead, it rots.
Beyond the city, within the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, and pipeline channels that vein the delta—one of the world's largest wetlands—exists a netherworld. Villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled 15. ____________ and rusty 16. __________. Groups of hungry, half-naked 17. __________ and sullen, idle 18. __________ wander dirt paths. There is no electricity, no clean water, no medicine, no schools. Fishing nets hang dry; dugout canoes sit unused on muddy banks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares, and the stripping away of mangroves for pipelines have killed off fish.
Nigeria has been subverted by the very thing that gave it promise—oil, which accounts for 95 percent of the country's export 19. __________ and 80 percent of its 20. _________. In 1960, agricultural products such as palm oil and cacao beans made up nearly all Nigeria's exports; today, they barely register as trade items, and Africa's most 21. ___________ country, with 130 million people, has gone from being 22. ___________ in food to 23. ____________ more than it produces. Because its refineries are constantly breaking down, oil-rich Nigeria must also import the bulk of its fuel. But even then, gas stations are often closed for want of supply. A 24. ___________ United Nations 25. _________ shows that in quality of life, Nigeria rates below all other major oil nations, from Libya to Indonesia. Its annual per capita income of $1,400 is less than that of Senegal, which exports mainly fish and nuts. The World Bank categorizes Nigeria as a "fragile state," beset by risk of armed conflict, epidemic disease, and failed governance.
From a potential model nation, Nigeria has become a dangerous country, addicted to oil money, with people increasingly willing to turn to corruption, sabotage, and murder to get a fix of the wealth. The cruelest 26. ________ is that half a century of oil extraction in the delta has failed to make the 27. ___________ of the people 28. __________. Instead, they are 29. _________ still, and hopeless.
"It's not fair," Felix James Harry muttered in a meetinghouse in the village of Finima on the western end of the island, close to the oil and gas complex. "We can hardly catch fish anymore. 30. ______________ is very hard." Harry, a 30-year-old father of two children, should have been in his canoe this afternoon, throwing out nets to snare crayfish and sardines. But he was sitting in an airless concrete-block shelter with half a dozen other fishermen, none of whom had much to do.
Houses in the new village are tightly packed, leaving little room for gardens. Windows look out on walls. In this claustrophobic setting, the men talked about nature. "The forest where the gas plant is protected us from the east wind," Solomon David, the community chairman, said. "Now, the rain and wind 31. ___________ our thatched roofs every three months. They lasted more than twice as long before." Another fisherman mentioned how construction and increased ship traffic changed local wave patterns, causing shore erosion and forcing fish into deeper water. "We would need a 55-horsepower engine to get to those places." No one in the room could afford such an engine.
The meetinghouse had no electricity, but a battery-powered wall clock, the only decoration, showed that another day was ebbing away. Forced to give up fishing, the young men of the village put their hope in landing a job with the oil industry. But offers are 32. _________. "People from the 33. __________ get all the jobs," Harry said, alluding to members of Nigeria's majority ethnic groups—the Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and Fulani—who are the country's political and economic elite. "We have diploma holders, but they have 34. ___________ to do."
35. __________ crowded the dim room. Bernard Cosmos, a strapping young man in a striped polo shirt, spoke out: "I have a degree in petrochemical engineering from Rivers State University in Port Harcourt. I've applied many times with the oil companies for a good job. It's always no. They tell me that I can work in an oil field as an unskilled laborer but not as an engineer. I have no money to get other training."
"I can say this," Osuoka said firmly. "Nigeria was a much better place 36. __________ oil."
Optimism is as 37. __________ as blue sky in the sodden delta. "Everyone was sure they would be blessed with the coming of the black gold and live as well as people in other parts of the world," said Patrick Amaopusanibo, a retired businessman who now farms near the village of Oloama. He had to speak loudly to compete with the "black noise," the hissing and roaring of a gas flare near his cassava field. "But we have nothing. I feel cheated."
Nigeria's oil money won't keep coming, of course—perhaps another 40 years, the experts say. Natural gas is a fallback. Nigeria's reserves are estimated at 184 trillion cubic feet (five trillion cubic meters), good for an estimated 240 years of production at current levels. In the meantime, Antony Goldman says, "The government is following a simple plan for oil extraction - get everything out, as much as possible.”
FISH
Isaac Osuoka remembers the first time he saw frozen fish. It was the late 1970s, and he was five. A peddler caused a stir as he entered Osuoka's delta town of Oeliabi (now Akinima) with a carton of what he called ice fish. "We never had fish brought in from outside," said Osuoka, who now lives in Port Harcourt. "We had no idea what frozen fish meant. There were rumors that this fish was kept in a mortuary."
Frozen fish was a harbinger of the changes that would traumatize Osuoka's community. "As a boy, I could stroll to the rivers or back swamps with a rod and a net and come back with enough fish to feed my family," he recalled. "There was usually enough left over to sell, providing income for us to go to school." This bounty would not survive the coming of oil. Leaks from pipelines and wells, and the building of roads and canals, have disrupted the wetlands. "The degree and rate of degradation," the UN report warns, "are pushing the delta towards ecological disaster."
"Today, there is not a single person in my community you could describe as a fisherman. We depend almost totally on frozen fish." At market stalls, a piece of frozen croaker or mackerel, most of it imported, goes for almost a dollar, unaffordable for most villagers.
Comprehension Questions
1. What does “this bounty” refers to?
2. “The degree and rate of degradation” What does this refer to?
3. Explain why the people depend on frozen fish for food?
4. Explain why fish is unaffordable in the village?
5. What is “ice fish” ?
Vocabulary
Rank the following words according to its degree of seriousness on the line scale below:.
WORDS related to disaster
Disaster degradation traumatize ebbing blessed bounty claustrophobic corruption sabotage hopeless murder
Scale:
Positive average very negative
_________________________________________________
WORDS related to Sound
Groan hissed thundered roared mumbled spoke
Scale:
Positive average very negative
____________________________________________________
ANSWERS
1.poisoning 2. stains 3.siphon 4. taints 5.fire 6. sabotage 7. kidnap 8. poor 9.possible 10.wrong 11. slums 12.smoke 13. potholes 14. beggars 15.huts 16. shacks 17. children 18. adults 19. earnings 20. populous 21. self-sufficient 22.importing 23. recent 24. report 25. twist 26. lives 27. better 28. poorer 29. surviving 30. ruin 31. scarce 32. outside 33. nothing 34. grievances 36. without 37. scarce 38. get
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