新西兰英语 695 Prince Charles has a birthday party
英语课
Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, arrived in New Zealand last weekend for a 6 day visit. The visit is part of the Queen’s 60th Jubilee 1. It is too far for the Queen to travel now but her son and grandson have been visiting countries in the Commonwealth 2 to celebrate her 60 years on the throne.
Today is Prince Charles’ birthday. He is 64. A special celebration was held in Government House with 63 guests who have a birthday today. They had to apply and were chosen by ballot 3. The chef made 64 small cakes – one for each guest including the Prince. Each cake was decorated with a New Zealand icon 4 – something that New Zealand is famous for. The icons 5 were all made of icing or something else like chocolate that people could eat.
Here are some of the icons on the cakes: jandals, buzzy bee, kiwi fruit, gumboots, hokey-pokey icecream in a cone 6, and a woolly sheep.
Vocabulary
?apply – send their name and say they wanted to be invited
?ballot – by chance, like a lottery 7; their name was pulled out of a box
?chef – expert cook (French word so ch is pronounced like sh)
?decorated – a picture or design on top of the cake
?icon – something that is important to a culture
?jandals – flip 8 flops 9, thongs 10; rubber sandals with a rubber piece between the first two toes.
?buzzy bee – a child’s pull-along toy
?gumboots – boots made of rubber, worn by farmers
?hokey-pokey – a crunchy icecream flavour made of golden syrup 11
Questions
1.If you live in New Zealand, can you think of other icons?
2.If you live in another country, what are the icons for your culture?
n.周年纪念；欢乐
- They had a big jubilee to celebrate the victory.他们举行盛大的周年纪念活动以祝贺胜利。
- Every Jubilee,to take the opposite case,has served a function.反过来说，历次君主巡幸，都曾起到某种作用。
n.共和国，联邦，共同体
- He is the chairman of the commonwealth of artists.他是艺术家协会的主席。
- Most of the members of the Commonwealth are nonwhite.英联邦的许多成员国不是白人国家。
n.（不记名）投票，投票总数，投票权；vi.投票
- The members have demanded a ballot.会员们要求投票表决。
- The union said they will ballot members on whether to strike.工会称他们将要求会员投票表决是否罢工。
n.偶像，崇拜的对象，画像
- They found an icon in the monastery.他们在修道院中发现了一个圣像。
- Click on this icon to align or justify text.点击这个图标使文本排齐。
n.偶像( icon的名词复数 )；（计算机屏幕上表示命令、程序的）符号，图像
- Distinguish important text items in lists with graphic icons. 用图标来区分重要的文本项。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
- Daemonic icons should only be employed persistently if they provide continuous, useful status information. 只有会连续地提供有用状态信息的情况下，后台应用程序才应该一直使用图标。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果
- Saw-dust piled up in a great cone.锯屑堆积如山。
- The police have sectioned off part of the road with traffic cone.警察用锥形路标把部分路面分隔开来。
n.抽彩；碰运气的事，难于算计的事
- He won no less than ￡5000 in the lottery.他居然中了5000英镑的奖券。
- They thought themselves lucky in the lottery of life.他们认为自己是变幻莫测的人生中的幸运者。
vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的
- I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
- Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。
n.失败( flop的名词复数 )v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的第三人称单数 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅
- a pair of flip-flops 一双人字拖鞋
- HPC environments are often measured in terms of FLoating point Operations Per Second (FLOPS) . HPC环境通常以每秒浮点运算次数(FLOPS)加以度量。 来自互联网
的东西
- Things ain't what they used to be. 现在情况不比从前了。
- Things have been going badly . 事情进展得不顺利。