Twilight review

This time I’d like to present you the summary of the last book I’ve read, Twilight. It’s the first book of Twilight series. The book was written by Stephenie Meyer, currently one of the most famous novel writer. The book is a novel that falls into romance and fantasy, but some critics say that Stephenie Meyer created the new genre called vampire-romance novel.

The action of the book is set in the present in the small, quiet and very green city, Forks. It describes the story of the main character Isabella “Bella” Swan who falls in love with the vampire Edward. It entirely changes their live and causes many problems. The story introduces seventeen-year-old Bella, who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington to start living with her father, Charlie, who is the sheriff in Forks. In the school Bella meets Edward and falls in love with him. One day Edward saves the life of Bella from the car accident and then Bella discovers that Edward possess the extraordinary skills, but she doesn’t even realize yet that Edward can be a vampire. After the accident Edward avoids Bella being afraid of confrontation with her. But, of course, the love wins and Edward confesses to Bella his feelings and tells her who he is. Bella is invited to Edward’s home to meet all his family (parents Carlisle and Esme and siblings Alice, Emmett, Rosalie and Jasper) and get to know the knowledge about family’s history and vampires in general. While Bella watches the Cullen’s baseball match, she meets James. James is a vampire from other family and also a hunter who desires Bella’s blood. He follows her, so Cullen’s family has to protect her. James works toward the goal threating her with killing her mother and lures her to Phoenix where he attacks her. Edward finds Bella and pulls out all the venom from her blood which would transform her into a vampire.

The main characters change and grow in the story finding out what the true love means. Edward is the first person whose Bella accepts and who isn't annoying her. She is ready to sacrifice her human life to be with Edward. On the other hand Edward doesn't want to agree with this idea because he claims that the transformation hurts much and the human life is more diversed than his own. It shows that Edward isn't selfish person.

Twilight is a type of the light book with quite easy vocabulary and uncomplicated plot, that is why this story isn’t my favorite one. The book contains a lot of descriptions of places and characters, causing a lot of breaks in the story, what can discourage a reader to continue reading. I can’t say that Twilight was bad, but simply this type of book doesn’t meet my expectations.

Jacek Kaczmarski - biography.

While I was sitting in my room last weekend I was listening music. I was looking for some old rock lyrics and then I met a song of one of my favorite Polish singer, songwriter and poet Jacek Kaczmarki. His life was full of patriotism and huge ideas which allowed him to be one of the most famous and respected artist in times of communism. That is why I decided to present you his life.

Jacek Kaczmarski was born in March 22. 1957 in Warsaw.  He made his debut in 1977 at the Student Song Festival, where he was awarded first prize for his work "Obława" (Wolf hunt). In 1980 he won Second prize at the Opole Song Festival for "Epitafium dla Włodzimierza Wysockiego" (Epitaph for Vladimir Vysotsky). Kaczmarski was on tour in France when the martial law was declared in Poland in December 1981. He lived in exile until 1990. During these intervening years he gave concerts in western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Israel. From 1982 he worked as an editor and journalist with Radio Free Europe. Kaczmarski was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx in 2002. He could be operated but he didn’t give the agreement because of the risk of losing his voice (he couldn’t realize his life without music and giving concerts). He died in a hospital in Gdańsk 2004.

This short biography shows that Jacek Kaczmarski was the person who was devoted to his patriotic ideas what we can hear in his song “Bajka o głupim Jasiu” (Story about stupid Jon). He was the romanticist who didn’t care about being famous and having money. More important for him was to show the truth about history of Poland, her current situation (state of communism) and injustice which resulted from it. Some people claim that he his time in exile was the sign of cowardice but this he gave plenty of concerts in many countries realizing public opinion abroad what was the situation of Poles that time. Making up the new songs he had to take under consideration the censorship which didn’t allow to release the lyrics which could include anti-Soviet contents. He was also the poet, that is why creating a lyric he could interlace abandoned slogans without the threat of being arrested by militia. Amazing lyrics, full of ambiguities and sarcasm, concerning the true life and the ability to build the climate by playing guitar, allow to say that Jacek Kaczmarski was the master.

Werewolves - two different views

Inspired by the last article I read ‘The Werewolf from Bedburg’ and the book ‘Twilight’, I decided to write this time something about werewolves. Every of the mentioned stories describes the different view on this creatures.

The book ‘Twilight’ presented the werewolves as the other race living with people, which isn’t even suspected of being the group of the cruel hunters. They can transform themselves into a wolf any time. They live in forest where is located their area to hunt and thanks to draught up the agreement they don’t attack people. The werewolves in the book have a lot of special abilities. They have the superhuman power,  they are very tough and of course they can transform into a wolf any time.

Entirely different view for the matter of the werewolves presents the article ‘The Werewolf from Bedburg’ which I had found on the website http://paranormal.about.com ^*. It’s a legend of Peter Stubbe, a wealthy farmer, widower and a father of two adolescent children, who was hiding his real face, the face of the murderer. The murders of Stubbe were exceptionally cruel, because he didn’t kill only animals but also children, pregnant women and his own kids. While he was hunting he was wearing the skin of a wolf. He was caught and accused of the several murders of the people and the livestock. At his trial Stubbe confessed that the Devil himself gave him a magic belt which allowed him to transform into the powerful werewolf. When he took the belt off, he believed, he returned to his human state.

To sum up, on the one hand the werewolves were used to build a mystery and suspense in many books, stories and film which most of us know very well. On the other hand the character of a werewolf was utilized by the church and monarchs in the Middle Ages to frighten their faithful and serfs and make them loyal. That is why Peter Stubb is, by some researchers, evaluated as a victim of the Middle Ages politics.

* http://paranormal.about.com/od/werewolves/a/The-Werewolf-Of-Bedburg_2.htm

Some web pages' reviews.

                 This time I decided to write for you two reviews of web pages. One of them concerns the charity program and is the part of The GreaterGood Network which is a family of websites that provides simple and effective ways of helping people. The second one is the official site of my favorite soccer team FC Barcelona.

                 Below you can click on the link that allows you to open the website www.thehungersite.com. Opening the site you can see a lot of advertisements of the companies that endow meals for the poor. The site is guided by the very easy rule 'one click-one meal'. It means every “click” provides one meal for a poor person. The more clicks, the fewer starving people on the world. It’s the very easy way to help others sitting at home and opening this site every day. It’s a good habit to set this site as your home page.

                The other page I wanted to present you is the official site of soccer club FC Barcelona – www.fcbarcelona.com. FC Barcelona is a type of huge club which contains many departments. There is not only soccer team but also basketball, handball, hockey and futsal one. Visiting the website you get the access to many webpages describing every of them. Choosing the link 'football' you can open webpages that concern the current situation in the club (official statements, news and press releases), you can see the current squad (pictures and description of every player), club and team statistics, history or simply you can buy a ticket for a game. The interesting way of presenting information allows to stay readers involved. The website is a little bit overloaded by links and advertisements but I think that every fan of FCB can understand it because of the huge sponsors’ help for the club.

                I hope you’ll enjoy watching the web sites, helping people by using the Internet every day and supporting one the most famous soccer clubs all the globe.

The report on "The Internet - Tool or Weapon?"

                This report was written to investigate the influence of the Internet on people and to answer the question „The Internet- Tool or Weapon?”. The report bases on scientists’ researches and the film “The Virtual Revolution”, created by BBC.

                Is widely believed that the Internet revolutionized the world and transformed the society, especially relationships between people. It changes the meaning of the word- friendship. That is why the Internet is compared to the Gutenberg Bible which by showing people other way of communication, it means written word, also entirely transformed the civilization of that time. We can’t also contradict that the Internet has a huge impact on our live, politics and business. This invention allows us to find out all the information very fast, then print it and present or send to others.

                The most wired nation on the world is South Korea, where 52% of the citizens use the Internet every day what means no less than 8 hours per week. There can be no doubt that the Internet influences strong on South Koreans. But opponents argue that there is a lot of people who are addicted from the Internet, what means that the addiction makes them impossible to live in a normal way. What is the most terrifying this problem touches also children. The addiction is the state when somebody spends on the Internet no less than 18 hours daily. A recent survey proved that about 20% of the addicted have to be hospitalized. We can only imagine how a big impact has the Internet on their relationships with peers or parents.

                In conclusion, the Internet is both, tool and weapon. When we use the Internet as a tool which can help us to improve our live and help us to work more efficient, there is no doubt that Internet is omnipotent. On the other hand if we allow the Internet to take possession of our live then the Internet transforms into a weapon, the weapon against humanity.

Technological innovations in banking service

What I wrote in the first post I had finished banking and accounting, that is why I decided to write a new post concerning technological innovations in banking sector. The inspiration to write about this subject were two films. First of them describes the vision of Commonwealth Bank for 2013 and and their plans how to improve the customer service to fulfil the growing needs of their clients. Another one presents Visa's idea for the pack of applications for current mobile phones.

Commonwealth Bank released a film that show us the vision of future banking. As we can see on the film taking a credit and making decision about buying a house or a car will be possible without going to a bank, preparing documents and signing them. All the way of taking credit, it means contact with consultant, reading documents, signing an aggrement will be availible on your mobile phone.

On the other hand Visa decided to create a new service for almost every type of mobile software that are commonly used in current cell phones, such as Androids, IPhones, Symbians and Windows Mobile. This applications will turn our mobile phone into credit card and will allow us to settle payments (both cash items transactions and retail purchuses), check our balance of account or history of transactions. In the future the application will work on every type of mobile handset and allow us to use very safe ways of protection such as digital signature or finger printing. Placing the application on a SIM Card let us move accounts from one phone to another.

Of course the first question is whether it’ll be safe. There is no answer for this questions. We can only imagine that it’ll be a new challenge for hackers and any type of burglars.

Me in NYC

My name is Peter. I'm 25 and I arrived to NYC two weeks ago. I'll spend with you 9 months so I decided to say everyone HALLO!

I came here together with my beautiful girlfriend Magda. We had finished our studies and we decided to spend another year somewhere abroad. And we chose NY!

Now something about me..
I finished finance and accounting at Warsaw school of economics. I worked for a year in Kompania Piwowarska (the branch of the SABMiller Group - brewing industry) - btw. I love drinking beer.
My interests are sport (especially volleyball, soccer and American football), economics, book (crime and thriller) and film.

I hope that you got to know me a little and that we will have a chance to meet and talk about our opinions about NYC.

Btw.
For me the most fascinating is that everything in NY is so mixed. Old brick-edifices are connected with the glass one, lots of narrow streets and enormous tall buildings. The lack of greenery in the city center is compensated with many parks around the Manhattan.
If you want to explore majority of Manhattan's nooks- it's true: you need a lot of time. Within 9 months we'll try to do it. But there are so many worth visiting places in the USA, so it can be difficult.