Words of Innocence and Experience

A new tragedy seems to be awaiting me as I log on to the “International News” section on Yam News every morning. During the past few days, accidents, atrocities, and chaos have suffused the international headlines. My heart bursts with pity and fear whenever I read about people perished from a plane crash, killed by an earthquake, or choked in a hideous forest fire. What is going to happen to the world? What is going to happen to me?

Conversely, people in Taiwan, my homeland, is miserably oblivious of what is going on in the world. Rarely do events taking place beyond the scope of the Taiwan district have their place in the TV news. People here are so caught up in the local personal drama, such as competitions between two politicians, or the identity of a celebrity’s new lover, that they take little heed of world events.

It is out of the question that people can live on without knowing world events in modern times. For one thing, the oil price has been rising at an unbelieve speed. Taiwan’s oild supply is dependent on the Arabic countries, similar to quite a few other places in the world, and therefore, people here has been suffering from the biggest inflation in decades. However, the media barely inform viewers of the reasons for this nuisance. leaving the common people only bitching and flickering, never sorting out a possible solution. Thus, the Taiwanese society is far from a blissful “plum flower paradise,” and things cannot be worse if we step out of the cage.

Moreover, apart from the economic achievements, which Taiwan is seemingly losing ground in recent years, the rest of the world would easily jump to the conclusion that Taiwan is merely a renegade provice of China, a small island with over-aggressive citizens. The only way for Taiwanese to ractify the misconception is to make contact with people from different country and to profess our rights. If we are unaware of anything out of the local sphere, the problem of our isolation would by no means improve.

As a result, here are the prominents events, or tragedies, that have happened from last week to today.

* North Korea decides to give up developing nuclear weapons in the six-party talk.
* Severe forest fire has been plaguing people in Portuguese.
* May people were killed or hurt amid the discords between gangsters in Guatemalan prison.
* Isrealian citizens are disatisfied with the forced evacuation of the Gaza Strip by the government.
* A powerful earthquake, measured 7.2 on the Richard’s scale, struck Japan on August 16.
* A Cyprus airliner crashed in the mountains in Greece, all 120 passengers perished.
* A Columbia airliner crashed in Venezuela, killing all 160 passengers.
* Three car explosion took place in Bagdad, killing at least 31 people.
* Tens of bombs exploded at once in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on August 17, wounded more than 100 people.