Don't Take A Picture Of This Building!

A soldier stopped me and told me not to take a picture of this building, as I have done. So if your in Colombo and see this building from the Galle Face Green, don't take its picture!

The Winner Is

I decided I couldn't procrastinate when it came to judging the essays so I started reading them and found the one I was looking for, one that opened with what had to be an original statement. All the others opened with what came off of the Internet. I knew I would find the same facts repeated in some of the essays, and most of the time, word for word.

Second place was full of plagiarism BUT, I gave them credit for finding writing about an interesting fact that many immigrants are sworn in on the 4th of July, he or she also finished the essay with an original statement.

After that I tried to find an essay that had any resemblance of trying to have some originality, it was hard but I took my chances with one.

So I picked the top three today. I'm not sure what these kids will win, hope it's something nice.

The Essay Judge

So I volunteered to judge essays written by local teenagers about the importance of the 4th of July to U.S. citizens. They are all hand written and had to be at least 1000 words. Why hand written?

To prevent flagrant plagiarism, one would just need to copy and past from the Internet, mix it up and they're done.

I was told to expect out right plagiarism and pretty much just pick the top that wasn't so obvious.

This would turn out to be harder than I thought.

Each and everyone reads as if it came out of a history book. I picked up one that had a small American flag glued to the front page, what an attention getter! I start reading it, and after a paragraph about the Boston Massacre it says, "see Boston Massacre". Okay, I'll check the footnotes.

One thing I will have to admit is that their handwriting is very neat.

Nice Dinner

It was just a gorgeous day today, even though it was cloudy. On my walk home I thought for sure the bottom would drop out, but it never did rain and it was nice and cool.

I got back to the apartment and I had a nice baked chicken dinner with au gratin potatoes (Was going to skip the "e" on the end for humor) waiting for me.

Decided to take my dinner and netbook out to the patio and watch the sunset and have my dinner. It was so relaxing. Pulled up my 80's hits on the netbook and had my dinner while the sun dipped over the horizon.

As it got darker I grabbed a candle and surfed the net a little (I do have overhead lights). For once it was neat to watch the trains approach, bright headlights shining the way and lit up cabs full of people going home.

I'm back inside now getting ready to watch a TV show I downloaded from the Internet.