Week 12

Read  the presentation Alternative medicine
http://uwb2m-s.blogspot.com/2012/12/alternative-medicine.html

 and comment on it here. Discuss it with the course participants.

F.C. CHELSEA LONDON

F.C. Chelsea London

Hello everyone, I would like to tell you about my beloved English football club which is F.C Chelsea London. I’ve been a big fan of this team for many many years. The are many popular players playing in this club, for example: Fernando Torres, Demba Ba, Oscar and many many others. Roman Abramowicz is the owner of the club and Rafa Benitez is the half-manager on this year. The history of the club started in 1905, when the club was established by a poor owner and Chelsea had a basic football pitch. The beginnings were tough, football in England was not well developed and it was difficult to find football players, who could be Chelsea’s stars. Till 1931 Chelsea played in the first and second league and, starting from 1931, only in the first league. After the season 1951 / 52 Drake modernised the club. He didn't only sit behind his desk, but he was leading trainings on his own. This charismatic manager of “the Blues” also led to the change of the Chelsea’s symbol. From 1953 Chelsea was represented by the “lion”. Chelsea continued to stay at the lead of the table, and in season 1960/61 Jimmy Greaves became the top scorer for the second time getting 41 goals in the season. In 2003 Roman Abramowicz bought the club and after the season 2003/04 he employed Jose Mourinho. In my opinion he is one of the best coaches in the world. He was able to build a team which was able to win a match after the match. Jose Murinho found stars like John Terry, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole. Moreover led by Murhinho, Chelsea reached for the Cup of England 6 times.

STADIUM – STAMFORD BRIDGE (LONDON)

I had a chance to visit Stamford stadium in 2007;2009 and 2011, during holidays. It was an incredible experience for me, because I could see the stadium of my beloved team.

SUCCESSES :

UEFA Champions League – CHAMPIONSHIP – 2011-2012

UEFA CUP – CHMPIONSHIP – 1970-71; 1997-8

UEFA SUPER CUP – CHAMPIONSHIP - 1998

FA CUP - 1960;1961;2010;2011;2012

MY FAVOURITE PLAYER IN F.C CHELSEA :

My favourite Chelsea football player is Frank Lampard. He’s a legend that’s been with Chelsea for the last 10 years. Frank Lampard is my idol because for all these years he’s been committed to his club, for which he started playing at a young age. He is a central midfielder. In the last year he won the most important title, which is the Championship in the UEFA Champions League. He scored in 5 goals and had 6 assist. Frank is a talented and versatile player. He’s also been the captain of the team for many years.

Manchester United – the biggest rival

Manchester has been the biggest Chelsea rival in the English football league for many years. It is led by Alex Ferguson. "Red Devils" defeated the Chelsea team after fascinating penalty kicks. However I think that in the English Premiership - equivalent to the Polish first league – there are more teams which are trying to fight for the championship. Every year in England there is a tough competition between the following teams: Arsenal London, Everton - ( Derby London ), Manchester City, Manchester United and F.C Chelsea.

QUESTION:

      1)      Do you like watching football matches??

      2)      What is your favorite football club ??

      3)      Is football a safe sport ??

SOURCE : 

     

      1)      http://www.chelsealive.pl/

      2)      http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_F.C

PICTURE/FILM :

1)      http://www.chelsealondyn.pl/dzialy/herby4.PNG

2)      http://www.chelsea.com.pl/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/stamford-bridge2.jpg

3)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NFVRYFeeUs

4)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9ys8rsvXtg

5)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y19HxjrF6rw

Chocolate – only calories or good product for our health?

    Chocolate is a product which everyone loves. The most beneficial effect on our health has the dark chocolate which contains a lot of cacao. Milk chocolates have more sugar and other additives, filled chocolates contain more sugar and artificial colors. Biological properties of chocolate vary depending on the amount of cocoa mass within it. This amount is the greatest in bittersweet chocolate (about 75%), smaller in dessert chocolate (30-70%), while the milk chocolate contains only 25% of the chocolate mass. White chocolate is produced without any addition of cocoa mass. Cocoa chocolate contains minerals like magnesium or iron, caffeine, theothrombine, endorphins and flavonoids, vitamins (B, A and E), vegetable oil which helps to eliminate bad cholesterol.

When people eat chocolate, the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain increase which improves mental processes efficiency. The same happens to the level of endorphins – the hormones of happiness. It is certain that the chocolate helps our body to cope with stressful situations. It is due to the magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus. Antioxidants in chocolate may have positive effect on the circulatory system – they reduce risk of heart diseases. It is also important to know that antioxidants contained in the chocolate slow down the ageing process. It is claimed that chocolate probably also reduces insulin resistance and inhibits inflammatory activation. When we eat chocolate regularly we can reduce the risk of atherosclerosis and a lot of other health complications.

On the other hand, chocolate has also a bad effect on our health. Everyone must remember that chocolate is a high-calorie and high-fat product. Nowadays more and more people are overweight, it is becoming a global problem. Also people who are allergic must be very careful because chocolate can induce allergic effects due to the presence of cocoa, nuts, seeds, milk and wheat.  People suffering from cardiovascular disease, hypertension, should avoid milk and white chocolate, due to the presence of saturated fatty acids. Milk chocolate is also harmful to the people who are lactose intolerant. Consuming chocolate in large quantities may result in headaches and migraine. To sum up, chocolate may have positive effect, but we shouldn’t eat regularly more than 2-3 lumps of chocolate a day.

QUESTIONS :

Do you like chocolate ?
Do you think that chocolate is healthy ?

      PICTURE/FILMS:

      
   http://papilot1.mykmyk.pl/img/660/0/shake_czekoladowy.jpg 

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj8n9qFr_c8

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPk75XeAles

SOURCE : - Wartość odżywcza wybranych produktów spożywczych i typowych potraw – „Hanna Kunachowicz” - Dieta czekoladowa – Ruth Moscher

CREATIVITY

Hello everyone!

In today’s presentation I’d like to show you how to fire up our creativity at work and also motivate you to change your approach.

I’ve divided my presentation into three main parts. First, we will be looking at barriers which limit our creativity. Next, I’m going to talk about practical methods, which help us to be creative. And third, I will finish my presentation by showing you what the perfect working conditions should be.

Everyone knows what is creativity. However, often we don’t know how to be innovative, imaginative. Does anyone think what is the main reason which don’t allow us to be creative? The most important barriers are stereotypes. Mostly, we stick to adopted rules and choose the easiest and the most popular way. Don’t do it! Maybe some of you are wondering – why? The answer is – because “beauty is only skin deep”.

Example: You are an employee in clothes shop. If you see a chic and elegant woman, you will probably think –she must be rich and have a lot of money, therefore you focus your attention on her. But if you see women clothed unkempt and more casual, you will think –she must be poor and you will immediately forget her. But what if she’s richer than that elegant and chic woman? If we change our approach, leaving the most obvious one behind, we may notice new and interesting possibilities.

Next barriers are killer phrases. Don’t say – “If something is good, why change it?” or “it’s impracticable”. This sentences narrow our mind.

 Another barrier is  focused on one, correct solution. If we decide that there’s only one way to solve a problem, we may never notice that there’s another solutions.

What about procedures? Procedures enforce doing things in a specific way. This kind of thing is not always good and useful. 

Let’s now take a look at practical methods. How often are we thinking about what could we change to get rid of the barriers? First of all, we should be willing to break these barriers and try to be open-minded. Don’t be afraid to express your ideas and opinions! Who knows? Maybe you will come up with something interesting. Secondly, you should exercise your mind and imagination. For example, mental activities could be very – within two minutes try to write as many new sentences as you can by finishing this one - “Most people are…”. Thirdly, we should base our new ideas on the old ones, because perhaps our old ideas are not completely wrong.

Now, let’s consider the last point. How should we change the conditions at work. Everyone knows that noise at work and working under pressure is not making us more efficient. Silence or our favorite music helps to  be creative. We should have people who can motivate us and people with whom we like to work. 

To sum up, firstly – identify the barriers and try to break them.  Secondly, you should change your behavior – don’t be afraid to express your opinion, train your mind and create new ideas on the basis of the old ones. And finally – change your working conditions. Silence and people are of great importance. 

Pablo Picasso said: Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Therefore seek/look for child inside us!

QUESTION :

1)    Do you think it's worth being creative?

2)    What do you think about this ?

SOURCE : „Trening kreatywności” – Krzysztof J.Szmidt ; - „Techniki kreatywności” – Matthias Nollke



PICTURE/FILM :

http://www.transitioning.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/creativity_cme-function_6x4.png
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Winter holidays in the mountains or in the warm countries?

Only one month left before the winter break and like every year many of us have the same dilemma – a hot or cold winter holiday spots?

http://dcs-188-64-84-13.atmcdn.pl/scale/o2/tvn/web-content/m/i/feab05aa91085b7a8012516bc3533958/2492bfe6-092f-11e1-959e-0025b511229e.jpg?type=1&quality=100&srcmode=0&srcx=0/1&srcy=1/1&srcw=99/100&srch=1/1&dstw=636&dsth=358

A few words about Warm Countries

For people who like summer an opportunity to spend a few days in the middle of Polish winter on  a warm, sunny beach is very tempting, because warm climates allow us to heat our body for the rest of winter. The most popular directions are: Egypt, Madeira, Cyprus, Thailand, Tenerife, Hierro (the smallest of the Canary Islands), Goa India, Israel, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. There are two ways to get to warm countries. First, purchase a trip in a travel office, second purchase a flight ticket and look for hotels on your own. Holidays via travel office are safer and sometimes cheaper than going on your own. For example you can fly to Cyprus for 8 days for 1000 zł (between January and March). You can also buy a trip to Zanzibar and stay in 5* hotel for 26 000 zł for 15 days ;) of course every price is for one person.

http://i.imgur.com/2QOJX.jpg

Now, when we know the prices we should think why we would like to lose the possibility  to ski and snowboard for the benefit of a  days of lying and frying on a sunny beach? We should ask ourselves a few questions, for example this:

1) Do I like summer and temperatures above 30 degrees?

2) Do I like summer more than winter?

3) What do I think about flying by plane?

4) Do I have appropriate swimsuits?

 A few words about winter break in the mountains

Who of us doesn't like the snow? Nobody I think (I mean snow in the countryside). Many of us, people from Central-Eastern Europe are just waiting for a winter break to have the opportunity to ski and snowboard. Why is it so exciting and many of us do  it every year? The answer is simple, because skiing and snowboarding provides us with fresh air, activity, bright conditions and many more. Thanks to it we are happier and we have new power to life. What about the costs? We have our own mountains in the South, but there are not so many ski pistas and the prices are really high, so a better idea is to choose the Alps in Italy, Switzerland or Austria. An average price of a 10 day trip to Switzerland is about 1500 zł per person (included: skipass, coach, accommodation and insurance). So as we see, the prices are very close to the prices of trips to warm countries.

http://skateboardingxd.blox.pl/resource/Best_Snowboard_Desktop_Sport_Airborne.jpg

Now, when we know the prices and destinations of our winter trips, we should ask ourselves a few questions, for example:

1) Do I like winter and temperatures below 0 degrees?

2) Do I like winter more than summer?

3) What do I think about traveling by bus?

4) Do I have appropriate ski clothes?

5) Do I have snowboard/ski equipment in the right condition?

6) Do I have RECCO in my ski jacket? (in case of snow avalanche)

Summarizing, we can spend a winter break in two ways (practically in three, adding lying on the couch and watching TV) in a hot and sunny country or in the mountains. I prefer warm countries so if I only have time I try to fly for a few days to warm beach, but I also like snowboarding so sometimes I choose the mountains.

Questions:

1) What do you prefer, a hot or cold winter holiday spots?

2) Have you ever tried skiing or snowboarding?

3) Have you ever been in warm countries when in Poland there was winter?

Safety on Polish roads

http://www.zinfo.pl/imageArtykuly/big/5958.jpg

In the first half of 2012 on Polish roads happened 16 547 car accidents in which 1 555 people died and 20 531 were injured. It means that one person is killed in every tenth crash. The first half was less tragic than the corresponding period the previous year, when in 17 939 accidents 1 786 people died and more than 22 000 were injured. This means a decrease in the number of victims by about 13%.

These statistics are tragic, because it shows that every year in our country about 3 100 people are killed on roads. This puts us on 24th place of 27 European countries because of number of killed persons per million citizens.

Since the most popular cause of crashes is excessive speed our government decided to reduce accidents by enforcing speed limits. They bought about 500 speed cams and 300 police cars with speed cams. Every day they make tens of thousands photos and movies and send them with fines to drivers. The average cost of this speeding fine is about 350 zł, because of this every year the budget of our country increases  by 3 million zł .

http://s2.blomedia.pl/autokult.pl/images/2012/04/Nowoczesny-fotoradar-5684022-209485.jpg

In my opinion in Poland it is very hard to reduce average speed, a better idea is to help our citizens to change their cars to newer and safer. The German government introduced a subsidy program for citizens who give their old car for scrap. Every citizen gets EUR 2 500, which could be used only for the purchase of a brand new car. It is estimated that 250 000 people get grants every month. For me is a better idea, because newer car = safer car. They also have motorways without speed limits, because they know that it is hard to reduce avg. speed of drivers and it is better to invest in newer, safer cars.

As you can see in following video new cars are safer than the older ones. Now avg. age of our cars is 15,5 years and 70% of our cars are older than 10 years. For example, I will show you a video with a crash test of a very popular car in Poland - Volksvagen Golf, the first is a brand new 2012 Golf 7th , the second is Golf 3rd from 1992.

I think changing cars to newer and safer versions will be more effective in reducing the number of car accident victims. I know that this won't reduce accidents to zero, but a new special safety equipment like ESP ABS etc. helps us to prevent some of crashes. For example, Volvo introduced in 2008 "City Safety" system, which stops our car when we don't respond to a pedestrian who is on our way or the car in front of us has stopped.

 Watch from 1:15 ;)

Unfortunately it doesn‘t work perfectly, but it's better than nothing.

Question to discuss:

1. Have you ever had a car accident? If yes, what was the cause of it?

2. Have you ever got a speeding fine?

3. What do you think about the massive attack with speed cams on us?

4. What do you think about the safety equipment like ABS, ESP, City Safety, Air Bags etc.?

5. Have you heard about the Swiss speeding solutions? http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9a0d279a-fc91-11de-bc51-00144feab49a.html#axzz2H7KGHYCe   What do you think of them?

European union changes its policy about cigarettes

As you know EU started a war with smokers. They would like to put disgusting photos which will cover up to 75% of each pack. Next great idea, which they want to implement is the prohibition of the sale of slim and flavoured cigarettes. The proposed legislation strengthens rules on how tobacco products are produced, presented and marketed - said Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, the spokesman of the European Commission. She also added that the Commission wants to set cigarette diameter to higher than 7.5 mm. For us, it will mean that we can only buy cigarettes like Marlboro red.

As we can see in the movie smoking is really bad, but in my opinion slim and flavoured cigarettes are better than Marlboro red, but the European Commision knows better. I think that this law won't reduce the number of smoker but only increase the level of cancers in EU, because many smokers will change slim/flavoured cigarettes to normal, big cigarettes.

Many experts say that this situation can reduce governments’ profit from taxes and increase the number of smuggled cigarettes from outside of the EU. For Poland, it  is very bad news, because we are the biggest cigarette manufacturer in the EU. Interestingly, we buy 40% of all menthols sold in the union.

The Commission said that every year 700 000 Europeans die from smoking and 13 mln of Europeans are sick due to smoking.

To sum up I will say that I was a smoker but I quit 2 years ago and I'm very happy of it. Now I can run longer, go to the 20th floor using stairs etc.

Questions to discuss:

1. Are you a smoker? Have you ever smoked? If yes, will you try to quit?

2. What do you think about this European idea to prohibit "tasty" cigarettes?

3.   If you are a smoker what will you do when this law is introduced?

Source: http://spoleczenstwo.newsweek.pl/unia-europejska-szykuje-nowe-prawo--palenie-ma-byc-mniej-przyjemne,99638,2,1.html