Dear all,

How are you on this very last day of 2008? Are you looking forward to the New Year celebrations? What’s
your plan for 2009?

Today I am inviting you to join me for a discussion on New Year’s resolutions.

It’s typically the time of the year that people both reflect on the past year and make New Year’s resolutions.（今天我邀请大家畅谈新年决心。）

On my list I have three things. I hope that by sharing them with you openly I will make a bigger effort to carry them out.

Stay Fit with Regular Exercise

Of all the exercises I can do in the gym I love swimming and yoga best. I like them because you don't need to compete with other people and they make me feel good afterwards. So I am going to rejoin the Health club that I belonged to three months ago.

Less Oil for Cooking

I am interested in cooking and always make delicious stir fry dishes but the problem is that they taste good but may give you too much cholesterol. So what I am going to do more this year is using my steamer and saucepan instead of the frying pan.

He or She?

You may be surprised if I tell you that I constantly make mistakes in the use of the English pronouns of him or her and he and she. Well, as a Chinese person you know very well that the sound of he and she(他和她) is the same.  I never make mistakes of this kind in writing but when it come to speaking I become helpless. As an otherwise fluently speaker of English I have no other problems but this one.

Well, I don't want to be too ambitious in my New Year’s resolutions so I will just go with these three.

How about you?  I’d be delighted to hear what you have in mind.

Thank you for all your comments. I appreciated your input.

My best wishes to you all for a very happy New Year!

Yang Li