ganji's recent article in Washington post about US financial aids for civil society in Iran:
Persian
English

for students

students petition to Secretary-General of the United Nations: Ban Ki-moon

Some language points

I am not sure who was the first person who taught me how to say "Student".

Unfortunately most of the language teachers in Iran have problem in pronouncing the words which begin with "s".
Iranians like Spanish don't have the sound "S" in their language. So, we would better practice to pronounce "S" properly.
"Stop" could be pronounced "stap" not "estap" or "student" for "Student" not "estudent".

Another thing that is better to keep in mind is "W" against "v".
If we say "viliam" for "wiliam", it's likely to confuse native speaker.


I'd like to write sth about the words ending in "tin" and "tain" and ... but it's hard to explain them in here. we would say "martin" but amazingly English speakers would pronounce it differently. The similar examples are: "mountain", "Britain", "written" and the like.

GDP and some points in Sydney

GDP is the most frequent term in Macroeconomics. Goss Domestic Product is a measure of the value of goods and services produced in a year in a country. There is another way of explaining GDP. The total amount of income/expenditure in a year in a country.

Based on the data in CIA FACTBOOK, GDP per capita in Australia in the year 2006 was equal to $33,300. GDP per capita is The GDP of a country divided by its total population.

Before living in Australia, I was wondering how GDP per capita is so high in some countries. People in the countries with high GDP per capita are not concerned about their basic needs. Food and clothes can be purchase from the first percentile of the salary and the rest of the wealth would be consumed on traveling products, luxuries, art and the like.

Recently I observed that wealthy people in Sydney are very interested in aboriginal arts. The residual money (after purchasing basic needs) would be spent on aboriginal arts and antiques. Amazingly the old wooden stuff (nearly 100 to 200 years old) is very precious in here and again a considerable amount of money would be allocated to that.

In general, setting up a business is easier in a country with high GDP as people have more liquid money and are more willing to buy.

examiner

I had a one day job at my university as an examiner!

The supplementary exam for those who couldn't attend the final exams. At university usually cheating is impossible and there are a lot of ways who prevent that.

I was looking around who realized a Chinese guy is reading from a small note hiding in his hand. I walked close to him and he was so nervous. I just tried to show him I caught him in red handed.

Apparently he didn't realize that. I was in trouble as i had no idea what to do. Reporting that could cost him around As$3000 plus more educational troubles. I just decided to give him some more time to stop that. He wrote a lot from his notes. After half an hour I was sure he could pass the subject. I walked towards him and very quietly told him:"Put it in your pocket and do not bring it out anymore". He was shocked.
He had a hard time for the second half of the exam. He was writing his own idea!