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The Maple Leaf Rag

Mapleleaf Man

Canada

July 6, 2010

Summer time...and the livin' is easy. Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high. Do you recognize the words? They are from an opera composed by George Gershwin, although you generally hear the song sung as a a jazz piece or in a blues style such as the one Janis Joplin did. 

It's hot where I am, how about where you are? If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, it's summer but if you are in the Southern Hemisphere you are in the middle of winter. Right now, it's 32 degrees here in eastern Canada and much of the eastern United States is sweltering in a heat wave.

How do you say it's hot in English? Sweltering is a good word. Roasting is another. You will also hear this classic line, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." On the radio these days you will hear two temperatures, the first is the pure temperature and the second is 'with the Humidex'. The Humidex scale adds degrees to the pure temperature, depending on the humidity. When it is humid, as you may know, it feels  much hotter than it really is.

The reason it feels hotter is because your skin can't get rid of the perspiration as quickly because the air is already full of moisture. When it is dryer, it feels much cooler because the skin can get rid of the moisture faster due to evaporation.

I hope you can stay cool if you are in a hot zone. We have a pool in the backyard which makes it really nice when the air is warm. I was out for a swim last night at midnight, it was wonderful!

Thanks for reading. Keep cool if you can! 

07:53 PM Jul 06 2010

lilyhuang123
China

ps: can i have your qq number ?  i wanna see you there and talk with you .

07:51 PM Jul 06 2010

lilyhuang123
China

i am living in the middle part of china ,a city named  changsha,i hope u heard it before,near by the mother river -- Chang Jiang,so we always get a very hot and long summer,and also a very cold and long winter,  the reason is what you have said ,the humidity. 

 The spring and fall are like guests ,when i was in university(it's an nationaou l school)so many  classmates they are from the north part and the south part of china ,they just  astonished by the weather here ,hehe ,it's a good time we always remember.

have a cool day!

lily

June 29, 2010

A friend of mine contacted me on QQ, quite concerned about a friend she had met on Englishbaby. Her friend had contacted her and told her a story of being in a refugee camp. She was penniless, poor, hungry and desperate but she convinced my friend that she had access to $3.5 million dollars, which had been left to her by her father. Does this sound familiar? Do you know what this is all about? Have you been contacted by anyone who has told you a similar story? 

First of all, if you get a message like this, report it to the owner of the website or simply ignore it. All of these messages are what we call scams  in English. The people who do this are called  scammers.  This type of scam usually originates in Nigeria or Ghana, and sometimes other African countries. The messages are all basically the same. The person, who is always a man but pretends to be a woman, contacts you and says that they have something important to share with you or they will send you a picture of themselves after you email them at their personal email address which is almost always a Yahoo address and sometimes a gmail address. They will say something like: age and race don't matter. It will seem that they are very interested in you personally and you may feel comfortable with the person and the messages. 

Please ignore these messages and report them as spam. I haven't received any messages like this on QQ but I get them on hotmail and yahoo all the time. The people who send these messages are criminals, thieves and fraud artists. They befriend you and gain your confidence, then try to steal your hard-earned money from you. 

Basically, the scam plays upon your own greed for money. The thief tells you that they have access to a huge amount of money that has been left to them by a relative. Because of political situations in their country, they can't get to the money. With your help, and with your money, they can get to the funds and will share them with you. As you may have guessed, there is no money in the first place. Everything to do with this scam is a lie. People all over the world are tricked by this activity and China, because it is just opening up to the world, is ripe for criminal activities of this kind.

Sometimes the criminals are right there among you  working on other scams. They might say that they have money to invest in your company or they might want to buy something that you are selling but they will have a very complicated shipping arrangements which will involve an exchange of funds with a bank in England. In the West, we are very familiar with these scams but, of course, some people still become victims of these criminals. 

Here are some tips: 
1. Don't discuss money with anyone you don't know. 
2. Don't accept messages from strangers who tell you that they have seen your profile and are very interested in you. 
3. Don't ship anything to anyone who insists on arranging complicated shipping arrangements that involve the transfer of funds from a bank in England. 
4. Remember this: If something sounds too good to be true, then it is too good to be true. 

If you have questions or comments, please send me a message. Thanks for reading!

04:37 AM Jul 01 2010

Mapleleaf Man
Canada

This scam has been around for years and years. Basically, it`s greed that makes it work. People belief that there are millions of dollars available, even if it sounds too good to be true. Many have lost their life savings to these criminals. Nigeria does nothing to stop this, in fact this is one of the largest money making projects in Nigeria. These men are all over the world running their scams and cheating people in every corner of the world. 

The scam works this way. In order to get the millions, or your share of it, there are expenses. You are asked to pay the expenses in order to get your share of the big money. Of course, there are no expenses at all and the criminals take your money and keep asking for more. Once you have paid out some money, you feel obligated to pay out more and more money and soon you have nothing left. There never was any big money to be had but your greed made you believe there was.  

01:15 PM Jun 30 2010

alia83

alia83
Iran, Islamic Republic Of

 

Thanks so much for your good note.

 

I had faced the kind of messages in the last year. I don’t rely on messages about such a huge amount of money, exchange and money transfer. Especially more than 90 percent of messages to me about the title are from African countries, e.g. Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Ivory Coast. (I remembered two messages from an American soldier in Iraq, like as the field). All of the messages are a typical solid text, that I feel an automatic message sending.

 

I like to explain about a message in englishbaby. Here, I received a message from a person without any information in her profile. However my name and my email address was in my profile, but the message began by “hello dear”, and ask me my email address. She called herself so beautiful young girl!!!Her father was a Doctor, with non African kind names, (similar to English names) a successful businessman in Gold and Diamond!!Her father was killed in attack of her Mum, by Gun!!However she was only one alive person of the family with 7.5 million Dollars, but she will live in a refugee camp!!Her big money was in European bank. Combination of the surprising information is a big lie, if anyone says that. I don’t trust to this big lie.

 

But I have a big question, why the process of theft is continuing? And I like to know about how did the theft was done?

 

Thanks,

 

08:15 AM Jun 30 2010

Mapleleaf Man
Canada

 Thanks for your comments. I'm glad I could help a bit. 

09:51 PM Jun 29 2010

fan11

fan11
China

 that's exactly what i meet  long time ago ,and what i did is ignore it ,and delete my e-maill address from e-baby.why there no way to grab them?

09:50 PM Jun 29 2010

Maariya

Maariya
Pakistan

Hi,

Thanx for this usefull advice.......

btw i usually get these types of msgs in ebaby too...

Last week i was in chating room where i met a person who offered me to come UAE,, he was ready to take all my expend there except only visa fee which he told me to pay via credit card.. i knew this type of fake people very well so i 4bid to make a fool...

Anyways, yesterday my frnd  met the same person but this time he had change information abt him (as he gave me already) with a diffrent deal...

 

07:10 PM Jun 29 2010

braveheart2010
Egypt

 thanks for ur advices

June 15, 2010

This week in China and other countries in Asia, Viet Nam and another one but I forget which, people will be celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival. I've been chatting with different friends on QQ and they've explained much of the history that is attached to this special day in Chinese history. 

If you are a student of Chinese history, you will know all about Qu Yuan and his life and poetry and, ultimately, his death by his own hand. It seems he carried a heavy rock into a river and drowned. People raced out in boats to save him, dropping rice into the water to keep the fish way. Later on Qu Yuan came back in a dream, asking his friends to wrap rice in three cornered silk packages to keep away the dragon. These days the rice is wrapped in leaves and the dragon boat races are held in many cities. Toronto has a Dragon Boat Festival too. Canada has over 3 million Chinese as part of our population.

I'm not sure but it seems to me that this festival is about the oldest annual festival there is in the world. It dates back to about 400 years BCE and, strangely enough, is not related to religion. Most of our festivals relate to something about god or Christ but this Chinese one is nicely different. 

What about the festivals where you live? Are there any that aren't related to religion? Are there any that are as old as this Chinese festival? The Dragon Boat Festival is about 2300 years old, can you beat that? Chinese culture was very advanced, even at that early date.  Most of the world was living in mud huts back then and I would find it unusual if there is an older festival in the world. Let me know, OK?

Thanks for reading.