belova_ep_praktikum_po_annotirovaniiu_i_referirovaniiu_inost

ent colour combinations with central inserts. The ergonomics of the phone, its size, folding angle and other small details were created for women's hands. The keyboard was welcomed even by those ladies with long nails. The phone's size is 86x43x26mm, and it weights only 85g. The front panel has the lens of a one megapixel camera with diode flash that can be used as a flashlight in standby mode. When there is an incoming call, the caller's id or picture is displayed on the external screen. The phone can record video in MPEG4 format and play MP3 music files. It is very easy to transfer information to the phone's memory via usb or wireless communication. This is all provided to ensure the phone is a big hit with the women.

The freshness of life

In 2005 Hitachi presented the world's first home air conditioner with the built-in Air Exchanger ventilation system which mixes fresh outside air with room air via a titanium catalyst working both as a filter and deodoriser. The two way ventilation system allows the conditioner to pull out up to 10 sq. m of impure air an hour and to pump back in up to 4 sq. m of fresh air. The system has an air condition controller, which analyses the quality of air and starts the two-way air exchange when necessary. All the harmful substances which can't be removed by the filters are drawn outside and only clean air comes into the room, guaranteeing your good health. Even with the windows shut your room will be full of freshness. The new Hitachi conditioners feature Nano-Titanium technology, which operates with objects up to 5 nanometres in size. The outside air runs through the Nano-Titanium filter where it is completely cleansed of bacteria, dust and odours. Air conditioning by Hitachi is a real art, combining the ideas and technology that make life and work better.

(The inflight magazine of the Transaero Airlines, June-July 2005)

Task 2. Answer the following questions:

1.What novelty in technology are presented in the article?

2.What are the main distinctions between devices described in the article and those created years before?

3.How was Sushi-USB created?

31

4.How is the described model of the telephone called? When did the model appear? What is its shape and size?

5.What extra functions has the telephone got?

6.When and which firm presented the new model of the conditioner? That is the purpose of the conditioner?

7.Describe the main operating characteristic of the conditioner.

8.Which of the described devices is of your interest? Why?

TEXT 9. THE BIG APPLE

Task 1. Read the text.

Initially this city was named New Amsterdam by the Dutch who arrived here first. It is located in the very suitable Hudson Bay, but the beautiful views of its harbour from the southeast of Manhattan were interrupted by piers and factories. It seems that New Yorkers have decided that their city is nice enough and needs no extra decorations. «New York is Manhattan» - at least that's what many Americans and citizens of the world think.

New York, unlike Moscow or Paris, has no historical centre with a town hall or a cathedral and nothing that could be called peripherals like in most European cities. All the five districts of New York were developed at the same time. But the narrow cape of Lower Manhattan provokes real horror in Europeans mixed with admiration. The heavy skyscrapers here are brutal, they break town-planning logic and ruin the views, transforming streets into gorges and creating huge transportation problems. However, this view has its own unique aesthetics. Anti-humanity turns out to be a hymn of independence, and the mountains of raised concrete, glass and metal develop into one of the most recognized landscapes on Earth. New York is really a very big and very different city. One needs to live in it for some time to understand it. However, the places defining its life and character are all well known. For example, Wall Street really is like a mountain gorge, rather deserted and silent. There are neither really expensive shops nor restaurants but mostly massive entrances to skyscrapers, small squares and rather simple pubs and clean fast food outlets. If you don't turn down Broad Street and the almost European side streets of New Amsterdam, eventually Wall Street leads you to a quay. This is the South Street Seaport, a unique place in Manhattan to remind you that New York is a city with a harbour. Unfortunately, in most cases you can only reach the ocean in less than appealing areas such as in the alienating zones of bridges and highways.

The real Manhattan begins with 34th Street: this is a straight walk of avenues and streets with a series of identical skyscrapers with glorious shop windows on the ground floors with built-in private residences. Like it or not, but this is New York. Between Canal Street and 14th Street, which marks

32

the final victory of the regular grid of numbered streets and avenues, there is an area, which can be described as an «alternative Manhattan», that will interest every visitor. Its heart is Washington Square with all its nonconformist artists, musicians, avant-garde theatre people and trendy writers from around the world. The villages are one more area of informal life.

Those who want to avoid the tourists and feel the city the way New Yorkers do, need to turn east, not west from Washington Square. An intellectual youth scene inhabits this place, where a red Mohican haircut and piercing is quite a natural sight. The district is famous for being radical and cheap, there are lots of strange coffee houses and second-hand shops where you can easily vary your wardrobe as well as different bookstores and experimental theatres.

Chelsea became really bohemian and arty after Andy Warhol's 1966 film about extravagant bohemian girls. There is the Dia Chelsea Centre for Art in the vast former warehouse on 23rd Street. Its curators are experts in modern art and know how to show their masterpieces well. Let the New Yorkers complain about the contemporary club life. They say that it has changed a lot from the good old days. It is true that some important clubs have closed, and the most interesting people have moved from expensive Manhattan to Brooklyn and even further. Nowadays the best parties are to be found not in Manhattan and usually on weekdays. Besides the major clubs, in New York they go to private small fee parties. The program there might happen to be much more exciting than in a «normal» club: from art performances or iron sculpture casting to toy car races and rooftop barbecues. You can find out about these sorts of parties from your new friends or by searching for posters on lampposts when walking around those bohemian areas.

Those walks just one block down from the Empire State Building to 5th Avenue may bring you to the famous charm of New York. This is Madison Square, one of the most beautiful places in the city, and the famous and graceful «Iron» which anticipated the angled aesthetics of skyscrapers. When naming another area, Times Square, the world's main crossroads, New Yorkers happen to be right. Formally, Times Square is not a square at all. Its width is made up of Broadway and 7th Avenue that meet at 42nd Street and join together for several blocks - it is really just a crossroads that grew. This is the place where the New Year TV broadcasts are filmed when a special light sphere falls down at the stroke of midnight.

The Rockefeller Centre established in Midtown in 1939 is a real inner city. There are fourteen buildings surrounding the central lowered square located in pairs. In and under those buildings you can find numerous shops and any kind of restaurant, from the most exclusive ones to Mexican fast food joints and coffee shops selling homemade chocolate. The best known tenants of the top floors are NBC and General Electric, which also gives its

33

name to the skyscraper. If all that stuff begins to bore you, go through East River to Brooklyn.

The area of galleries and artists' workshops under the Manhattan Bridge has lots of nice cafes, mostly French. The best of them are on De Kalb Avenue and Smith Street. Almost every door on Bedford Avenue is a restaurant, cafe or pub. By the way, smoking there has been banned since April 2003. If a venue has no inner yard or street tables, you have to go outside to smoke.

New York is probably the only city in America where they would advise you not to have a car. However, the New York Subway, which is open 24 hours, is considered one of the most complex in the world. Many lines partially duplicate each other, and you can travel from A to В along several different routes. Some trains travel specific routes, some stop at every station but others stop only at junctions; trains from two, three or even four different lines may stop at one platform. Some parts of this network are constantly closed for reconstruction, routes are altered, some stations are closed at weekends, a «local» train may suddenly declare that it is going further as an express service, so if you arrive at the wrong place, don't be upset: it is not your fault.

By the way, if you are in search of adventures and some «real life» there is no need to visit the poorer areas of high-rise blocks. Not because it is dangerous there but just because, unlike the European cities, there is nothing picturesque in the poorest parts of New York. It would be much better to cross the city by taxi, preferably on an early weekend morning. You will see a very different city. Take a ferry to Hoboken that leave every 10-20 minutes from Battery Park to see and feel New York. The panorama you'll see from there, that famous broken line of skyscrapers on the horizon, is something you just have to see for yourself.

(The inflight magazine of the Transaero Airlines, June-July 2005)

34

Task 2. Answer the following questions:

1.What is a brief history of the city described in the article? What is the name of the city? What is its nick-name?

2.What is the main difference between New York and other big cities such as Moscow or Paris?

3.Name the districts and streets depicted in the article.

4.What remarkable can one find or see in the districts of the city? Briefly describe each of the city districts.

5.Describe the New York Subway. What is the difference between New York Subway and, e.g., Moscow Metro? Which system do you consider more comfortable? Why?

6.What interesting can be seen in the poorest areas of New York?

7.How does the most famous view of the city, which is easy to recog-

nise?

8.Have you heard about sights described in the article before? What was the kind of information?

9.Which of the sights described would you like to see or visit? Why? Is it connected with your private interests?

10.When is the best time for sightseeing of New York?

TEXT 10. ST. PETERSBURG, THE ETERNAL CITY

Task 1. Read the text.

The gayest island. That's what Peter the Great called a small island in the Neva delta that he had just taken from the Swedes and on which he built an earth-and-wood fortress at the start of 18th century. The name is a translation from Dutch - Peter was very keen on all things Dutch. Needless to say, the fortress also received a Dutch name: Sankt Peter Burgh, or Fortress of Saint Peter.

Construction was completed in the spring of 1704. By 1740, solid stone walls surrounded the citadel and Italian architect Domenico Andrea Trezini erected a grand cathedral inside, which gave the fortress its present unofficial name: the Fortress of Peter and Paul. During Peter's time, the larger island nearby was the Russian army's main encampment during the Russo-Swedish wars on the Baltic coast. Peter the Great's little house still stands here as a relic of bygone days. The Emperor (although he was still Tsar at that time and took the Roman title only later) decided to make a stand on the Neva even before the Northern War ended. He intended to build a large sea port here and move the capital from Moscow to the banks of the Neva. The military encampment on Saint Petersburg Island soon became a city, with the same name as the nearby fortress of Sankt Peter Burgh. On the Neva's right bank between Peter's house and the fortress was built the first city square: Trinity Square. Until the 1730s it housed the highest Russian government institutions: the Senate, the Synod

35

and the Colleges. A large military shipyard, the Admiralty, grew up on the opposite river bank, so this part of the city became known as the Admiralty Side. Peter ordered the construction of two stone palaces on the same bank: the Summer and Winter Palaces. He chose the area around the latter for foreigners who served the Russian Court to settle.

The Summer Palace, a small two-story building, has survived intact until the present day. The adjacent garden planted for Peter later grew into the famous Summer Garden that's still the place of choice for relaxing walks and romantic dates and is a sanctuary for lonely souls. The garden's rich palate during Petersburg's autumn makes it an ideal place to cure the usual post-summer melancholy.

Important events in the city's history marked the second decade of the 18th century. The woods were cleared from two sides: from the Admiralty and from Alexander Nevsky Monastery towards the Old Novgorod Way, which connected the new city with the rest of the country and roughly ran where Ligovsky Prospect now runs. Soon this path through swampy woods became a wide road called the Grand Perspective or the Grand Avenue and turned into the new capital's main entry way. The legendary Nevsky Prospect was born. This is how a foreign visitor described it in 1721: "We entered a long and wide stone paved alley, which is quite appropriately called a prospect for one can hardly see its end.... It's amazingly beautiful and clean throughout." At the far end of the avenue one could see the Admiralty tower's elegant needle.

The Trident. The really intensive construction started at the end of the 1730s after the Senate approved General P. Yeropkin's first Saint Petersburg Development Plan. The city's layout had the Admiralty as the focal point with three major streets running outward radially. One of these was, of course, Nevsky Prospect. By the mid-18th century, the first grand palaces on Nevsky appeared: Anichkov, Stroganoff and others. The Alexander Nevsky Monastery architectural ensemble and Grand Square at the opposite end were completed by the end of the same century. Granite embankments lined the Ekaterina Canal and the Fontanka and Moika Rivers running under Nevsky. Along the avenue stone sidewalks were laid.

But it was the first quarter of the 19th century, the time of Petersburg's Renaissance, which saw Nevsky Prospect reach the apex of grandeur. The completion of Kazan Cathedral, the Admiralty and Mikhailovsky and Alexander Squares turned Nevsky into one of the world's most beautiful streets. Majestic facades, monumental cathedrals and palaces, linden trees, which fill the city air with the intoxicating aroma of honey every spring, and wooden sidewalks - called 'street parquet' by contemporary locals - this is the Nevsky Prospect that, despite all the turbulence of Russian history, we can still walk along today.

36

Romancing the stone. But what really mesmerizes you in Petersburg are the city's stones. Don't buy what some of the Northern Capital's critics say - and there are still quite a few - namely, that this granite-encased city is the epitome of coldly rationalistic disregard for anything human, so typical of a 19th-century imperial capital. The skillfully done stone decor of the buildings actually makes them sparkle with light - just look at them from a different angle and, of course, in the right mood. It appears to me sometimes that mere humans could not have created this city.

And of course no other building in the city of Peter can boast such richness and diversity of mineral stones in its solid body as the majestic St. Isaac's Cathedral. The architecture, design and internal artistic decor of this marvel outshine all other European churches. Constructed in the 19th century, it was envisioned as the symbol of Russia's imperial greatness. The architects and decorators filled it with almost every possible kind of marble and even semi-precious stones with which the endless Russian land is so rich. The inside walls and floors, done with malachite and yellow and red marble, were supposed to symbolize the richness and openness of the Russian soul. How was such precision achieved when erecting and polishing the giant marble columns that support the dome? Mind you, they were cut whole from solid marble rock formations in the Russian North and brought to the construction site hundreds of kilometers away intact! It took thousands of people to deliver these rocks to the new capital.

The cathedral's foundation was made of larch poles, thousands of which were driven into the swampy soil. Believe it or not, but engineers still think the larch is the best wood for the purpose of making foundations in marshy and putrid soils such as the Neva delta. While granite was and remains the symbol of St. Petersburg, the larch is the city's 'living' talisman. It grows in abundance here and if it hadn't been for the timber's phenomenal properties - such as resistance to rot in extreme conditions - the “Venice of the North” may never have become what it is today.

The phantom city. Twilight dramatically changes this town's appearance. This period eats up the skyline, dissolves with its humid fog the figures of iron and stone lions and turns pedestrians into glimmering silhouettes. The night always makes Petersburg more mysterious with its dim street lights and shop windows. But Petersburg at night doesn't require any additional illumination, for the night is its mistress. At night you can feel the fantastic mystery of Petersburg's romantic loveliness that made the greatest Russian poets and writers - Pushkin. Dostoyevsky, Akhmatova, Blok - prisoners of its charm. Try it at night. You'll fall in love with this eternal city.

(Aeroflot Inflight magazine, 3 (12) May/ June 2006, by Constantine Kiknadze)

37

Task 2. Answer the following questions:

1.What was the name of the island, where the city of Sankt Peter Burgh was founded? What were the conditions under which the island was occupied?

2.What is the name of the island nowadays? Why?

3.How did the city develop? Where were the first city square, palaces and buildings of the highest Russian government institutions?

4.How are the Summer Palace and Summer Garden described in the

article?

5.How was the Nevsky Prospect born?

6.What is the Triden? How did it appear in the city?

7.What does the main street of the city present? What sightseeing can be found in that street?

8.When was the St. Isaac’s Cathedral erected? Why does is outshine all other European churches?

9.Describe the architecture and décor of the Cathedral?

10.How does the city look like in twilights and nights?

TEXT 11. NEITHER RAIN NOR SLEET NOR SNOW

Task 1. Read the text.

The Patagonians, or “big footed”, acquired their nickname for a reason. After reaching the Americas the Europeans were amazed to see the natives dipping their feet on rainy days into some milky substance: the rubbery sap of the caoutchouc (india-rubber or Quechua) tree. After it dried, the sap

38

made perfect-fitting and absolutely waterproof “shoes” around the feet. The footprints left by this footwear were so huge that they struck fear into Patagonia's neighbors and the much more solid-built and taller Europeans. Hence the name – big footed.

Years later this wonder-sap was named latex by European scientists. It took a couple of centuries for Europeans to learn how to cultivate these trees outside South America. British scientists in the London Botanical Gardens were the first to do it in the 18th century, and the pioneer who successfully applied its amazing qualities was, of course, the famous Scotsman Charles Macintosh (1766-1843). He invented the process of impregnating fiber with latex, thereby creating the marvel of waterproof textiles and Europe entered the age of waterproof macintosh coats. These days macintosh has become a generic British name for almost any chemically processed raincoat but the first macs were made with natural latex-impregnated fibers only. And good old Charles came about his invention, as many inventors do, by His Majesty Chance.

While experimenting with hot fluid latex he dropped some on his trousers. We know neither what kind of trousers they were nor what chemicals Macintosh used to clean them, but he was startled to see that the hotlatex spot did not absorb any water at all but just kept repelling it! The waterproof texture had come into being!

Chemists around the country immediately took to Macintosh's discovery. They played with it until the 1840s, when some bright mind in the English city of Springfield proposed making “shoes for shoes” (or galoshes, overshoes, or rubbers in familiar English, or totes as the Anglo-Saxon world knows them nowadays). Humankind has always wanted to improve the quality of all organic and non-organic fabrics and at the same time make them more comfortable and cheaper, so the first galoshes were made of natural leather covered with latex – only later did shoe-makers begin to use pure synthetic rubber which is, of course, much cheaper to manufacture.

But still, the idea of producing something cheaper and by massproduction, such as boots for soldiers, was still in the future. Chemists kept on experimenting with fibers and latex derivatives. Then multilayered fibers impregnated with latex-like resins with tar as an additive came into being: kirza - simple but very effective.

What's the word's origin? It's hard to say. Russian dictionaries trace kirza to the German Kirsey and further back to the Old English kersey, which meant a harsh wool fabric. Original experiments were done with wool, that's for sure, but later the boots were made from cotton because its fibers absorbed more latex.

The first true Russian kirza boots (with tar added to the fibers) were...

well, not very practical. During Russia's freezing winters they became so brittle that they cracked and during the summers they often melted. Some

39

linguists think that these latex-tar fiber boots were given the Russian name kirza in the 19th century after the Russian kirza (here, with the accent on the first syllable), for the “upper frozen layer of earth”. So says the greatest Russian language expert and author of the Comprehensive Russian Language Dictionary, Vladimir Dal. Whatever the original meaning and provenance of kirza, it first entered the Russian vocabulary as “waterproof footwear” back in 1909.

But the true history of kirza boots starts in post-revolutionary Russia. The poor, war-torn country could not provide itself with either leather or synthetic leather substances for making shoes for its people. There was no caoutchouc tree in Russia, so scientists kept working on producing artificial latex. Russian chemist Sergey Lebedev (1874-1934) first produced synthetic caoutchouc in 1928 and in the same year the small Kirza Experimental Boots Factory appeared. Beginning in 1928, all Russian shoe-making factories started making kirza boots with Lebedev's synthetic caoutchouc, for which he received the Lenin State Prize in 1931. It was a real breakthrough for Russia.

The Russian kirza made its real mark on history in World War II when all Red Army soldiers wore the boots. They marched victoriously in them from Moscow to Berlin through mud, dirt and swamps, through rain, sleet and snow.

(Aeroflot Inflight magazine, 3(12) May/June 2006, by Raisa Kirsano-

va)

Task 2. Answer the following questions:

1.How did “bigfooted” get their nickname?

2.Who was the first cultivated the caoutchouc tree in Europe? Where and when did it happen?

3.Whose name is the creation of the waterproof coat connected with?

4.When did the first “shoes for shoes” appeared? What are the names of them? How did the first “shoes for shoes” look like?

5.How did “kirza” come into being?

6.What is the origin of the word “kirza”?

40