Canada Employment Labor & Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Canada Employment Labor & Law - Essay Example Canadian labor laws require every employer to implement programs that are helpful to employees, the employer, the dependents of the employee and the community (the Canadian Charter for Occupational Health and Safety Act). This act obliges employers to provide a safe work place from sexual harassment and discrimination. On the employee and his dependents, occupational health programs should facilitate low personal health care costs, sustained earnings and increased productivity. It is the duty of the employer to offer safe work place from incidents such as discrimination and sexual harassment. The employer needs to probe incidents and take relevant actions to prevent similar event from happening in future. For instance, in this case, the employer should terminate work contract with Marcus Marques because his behaviors are dangerous and might lead to injury of other employees at the work place. The position of other nurses should not make the employer reinstate Marcus since they did not complain to the management. The situation would not be different if the Union was supporting Marcus reinstatement because his work relationship with nurses has proved futile. Marcus has violated the law by sexually harassing the two nurses at work. Even if the Union defended him, it would be hard for him to positively relate with fellow workers. The union needs to represent the interests of all employees including the two nurses; they should not be discriminated against. However, based on collective bargaining agreement between Marcus and Lester William hospital, his firing was not justified. Therefore, the union needs to step in and represent the grievances of the worker against the employer for failure to honor the collective bargaining agreement. Despite the fact that the two nurses are against Marcus reinstatement, it is the duty of the union not discriminate against him until the case is heard and

Good Country People Essay Example for Free

Good Country People Essay This essay will delve into the life of Flannery O’Connor not only as it is told biographically but as her life relates and is reiterated in the stories she writes. By using O’Connor’s fiction as a backdrop to her life, the essay will focus on the bizarre characterization of the protagonists of O’Connor’s stories as much as O’Connor herself was a very unique person. Thus, O’Connor will be exemplified as being explained through her characters such as in the story Good Country People. O’Connor was a great user of allegory in her stories. As O’Connor in her life was an introvert most of her characters are gregarious such as in Good Country People and the character Hulga. Hulga denies herself first in the story by the changing of her name from Joy to Hulga which signifies O’Connor’s own contempt of falsities. She is stating through the character Hulga that people are prone to be blind in areas in which they should be keeping both eyes open. She states this in regard to events in her own life such as growing up Catholic in a mostly Protestant neighborhood. Hulga is blind to her own personality and what she is capable of doing and by changing her name she is trying to rewrite her own history. O’Connor as a write can sympathize with this notion as through her characters O’Connor is trying to find her own identity. O’Connor’s true niche in writing lay with the creation of the tragic hero. She felt that she herself was a tragic hero since she at once had to overcome a physical malady as well as remain static because of that malady and thereby not enjoy the world nor prove to the world the capabilities of the self; herself. Her second belief was that the world is charged with God (Wikipedia). She was unapologetic in her writing style and the ‘grotesque’ characters with which she filled her stories. Each character of O’Connor’s fiction brought on a fundamental change for the character. When Hulga changes her name and then meets Manly Pointer and goes through a very quick transformation. The rejection of the name Joy to the embrace of the name Hulga reveals for the audience that Hulga does not enjoy herself but expects life to be filled with disappointment and in fact has been taught as much from family and neighbors. Upon meeting Manly Pointer Hulga, Hulga is contemptuous and sees herself as better then him whom she describes as simple and dim witted yet agrees to go on a picnic with him in order to show him a deeper meaning to life (Hulga is hung up on suffering and sadomasochistic fantasies). In fact, Hulga is the one who is ignorant about the world as Manly Pointer demonstrates a series of hoodwinking events in which he seduces Hulga and leaves with her wooden leg. This is where Manly Pointer reveals his true self and where the reader is exposed to the true Hulga. O’Connor was brilliant at recognizing the validity of a person in key moments. Hulga had to be stripped of her dignity in order to be humble and recognize some truths about herself. This parlays to the fact of O’Connor’s illness and her attempting to make sense and assign some sort of purpose to the disease in which she could see none as a Catholic expect to think of it as a way in which it allowed herself to remain humble before God. As O’Connor states in Good Country People, Everybody is different, Mrs. Hopewell said. Yes, most people is, Mrs. Freeman said. It takes all kinds to make the world. I always said it did myself. (OConnor 181 -82) Thus, O’Connor is exemplifying that diversity is the key to the enjoyment of life and that ascertaining to the idea of perfection is unconscionable. O’Connor’s niche in literature was the writing of tragedy. This is seen not only when Manly Pointer steals Hulga’s leg and she must wait for assistance up in the tree house. O’Connor wanted her characters to be presented through a dichotomy of good and bad or through their capabilities of violence paired with their being touched by divine grace (Wikipedia). This change then is painful; for Hulga it is pride and the fact that she is faced with her own ineptitude and country ways. Each character falls in the story, tragically and ironically. Thus, O’Connor is not sentimental in her stories which reveals a character trait of her own; the absence of pity from her life as it is from her stories. This plays into the concept of identity which relates to most of O’Connor’s characters; the self journey and the eventual finding of the self at the end of the journey no matter who the self truly is. O’Connor for her part led a very sheltered life so the theme of a journey is prevalent in most of her stories, especially in Good Country People. O’Connor liked to write about displaced people because she herself felt out of place or even she felt this theme got to the truth of humanity faster than a character that already has sought redemption at the beginning of the story. O’Connor wrote about the journey just as much as she wrote about the metamorphoses of the characters since for O’Connor it was in the change of character, the switch from sin to asking for forgiveness that marked her life. Work Cited O’Connor, Flannery. Good Country People. Harcourt Company, Noonday Press, 1977.

Bioinformatics Analysis of DGAT1 Gene in Domestic Ruminnants

Bioinformatics Analysis of DGAT1 Gene in Domestic Ruminnants SIROUS EIDIVANDI Abstract Diacylglycerol-O-acyltransferase (DGAT1) gene encodes diacylglyceroltransferase enzyme that playsan important role in glycerol lipid metabolism. DGAT1 is considered to be the key enzyme in controlling the synthesis of triglycerides in adipocytes. This enzyme catalyzes the final step of triglyceride synthesis (transform triacylglycerol (DAG) into triacylglycerol (TAG). A total of 20 DGAT1 (8,9 Exones) gene sequences belonging to 5 species include cattle (Bos Taurus and BosIndicus), Goats, Sheep and Buffalo were analyzed, and the differentiation within and among the species was also studied. The length of the Exone 8 and Exone 9 respectively were 75bp and 64bp (total: 139bp). Observed genetic diversity was higher among species than within species, and Bos Taurus had more polymorphisms than any other species. Novel amino acid variation sites were detected within several species which might be used to illustrate the functional variation. Differentiation of the DGAT1 gene was obvious among species, and the clustering result was consistent with the taxonomy in the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Keywords: DGAT1gene, Bioinformatic, Ruminnants Introduction Bioinformatics has become an important part of many areas of biology. In experimental molecular biology, bioinformatics techniques such as image and  signal processing  allow extraction of useful results from large amounts of raw data. In the field of genetics and genomics, it aids in sequencing and annotating genomes and therefore we can observe polymorphic sites, Gene Expressions,Similarities and differences between and within gene sequences in the varies Species and etc. on the other hands gene mapping research has led to the discovery of many polymorphic sites throughout the Ruminants genome that can serve as genetic markers for selection in breeding schemes (Jing-Fen K.et al., 2008). Diacylglycerolacyltransferases (DGATs) are involved in the process of catalyzation of the final step of the triacylglycerol (TAG) biosynthesis (Hatzopoulos et al., 2011). This enzyme has been found to be encoded by two genes (DGAT1 and DGAT2 ), of which the most studied and important one reavealed to be DGAT1 . This gene is responsible for the codification of the protein related to DGATs activity (Cases et al., 2001). In bovine, this gene is located on the centromeric end of the bovine chromosome 14 (BTA14), harboring the QTL with a large impact on milk production traits (Grisart et al.,2002; Winter et al., 2002). DGAT1is a microsomal enzyme catalyzing the addition of fatty acyl Co A to 1, 2, diacylglycerol to yield CoA plus triglycerol and is important in lipogenesis in many tissues, including mammary gland (Kuhnet al.1998). DGAT1 gene is considered to be a very strong positional candidate gene for fat percent of milk. Kaupeet al., 2004 reported the frequency of this substitution in various cattle breeds and grouped them from very low frequency to fixation inBosindicuscattle breeds. DGAT1 gene is considered to be a very strong positional candidate gene for fat percent of milk. Kaupeet al. [2004] studied Polymorphism of this gene in Bostaurus and Bosindicus breeds. They claimed that K allele of DGAT1 gene is a wild type and the A allele substitution probably occurred after the divergence of Bostaurus and Bosindicus (Kaupeet al., 2004). Recently, many studies showed a significant association between polymorphism of this gene and milk production traits (Grisartet al., 2002; Kharrati Koopaeiet al., 2012; Ripoli MV et al., 2006). There is a general consensus in the literature that the alanine to lysine amino acid change (K232A) in exon 8 of the DGAT1 gene is associated with reduced milk production (Spelman et al ., 2002; Thaller et al ., 2003a; Banos et al., 2008), Materials and Methods A total of 20 sequences with Exons of the DGAT 1 gene and the amino acid sequences belonging to 5 species were obtained from GenBank (Table 1). All the sequences were aligned using the Clustal Omega program implemented in EMBL-EBI service. DnaSP (version 5.1) software was used to analyze the haplotype diversity (Hd), the average number of nucleotide differences (Tajima 1983), the  nucleotide diversity (p), synonymous nucleotide diversity (ps), nonsynonymousnucleotide diversity (pa) with the Jukes and Cantor correction, the polymorphic site(S), the singleton variable sites (SP), and the parsimony informative sites (PIP) for each species, and the average number of nucleotide substitutions per site between species (Dxy) (Lynch and Crease, 1990). The phylogenetic tree among 5 species based on the D xy was constructed using the unweight pair group method with the arithmetic mean (UPGMA) implemented in Mega 6 software. Table 1: DGAT1 gene, Exons 8 and 9 sequences of 5 species Results and Discussion DGAT1 gene, Exon 8, The Exon sequence of 8 has 75bp in domestic ruminants. We used 6,4,4,4 and 2 sequences of the exon respectively in BosTaurus, Bosindicus, Bubalusbubalis, Ovisaries and Capra hircus(table 1). DnaSP (version 5.1) software was used to analysis of them. The haplotype diversity (Hd) within the sequences of sheep, goat and buffalo was 0, because there wasn’t any polymorphism in these sequences. The haplotype diversity (Hd) within the sequences of bostaurus and bosindicus were shown respectively, 0.733 and 0.5 with 3 and 2 polymorphic sites. DGAT1 gene, Exon 9, The Exon sequence of 9 has 64bp in domestic ruminants.The haplotype diversity (Hd) within the sequences of goatbostaurus and bosindicus was 0 but the haplotype diversity (Hd) within the sequences of sheep and Buffalo was 0.5 with 2 polymorphic sites. Polymorphism and Genetic Diversity among Species The alignment of 20 sequences of 8 and 9 exons within the region of 139bp and containing gapswas carried out using BioEdit. The results of DnaSP analysis indicated that theselected region (1–140) of the 20 sequences from different species have 139sites, excluding sites with gaps (2). There are 134 invariable (monomorphic) sites and 4 variable (polymorphic) sites that include 3 singleton variable sites and 1 parsimonyinformative sites.The nucleotide diversity (p = 0.00885) and the average number  of nucleotide differences ( K = 1.221) for all sequences are lower than the highest values in bostaurus (p = 0.01014 ,K = 1.4). The polymorphic information and haplotype diversity of the DGAT1 gene (8 and 9Exons) for each species are listed in Table 2. Table 2: Genetic diversity of the DGAT1gene(8 and 9Exons) in 5 species h, Number of haplotypes; H d, haplotype diversity; K, average number of nucleotide differences; Ï€, Nucleotide diversityÏ€s, synonymous nucleotide diversity; Ï€a, nonsynonymous nucleotide diversity; S, Number of polymorphic sites; SP, singleton variable sites; PIP, parsimony informative sites. The most variable sites (3), singleton variable sites (2), and average number of nucleotide differences (1.4) were found in bostaurus, whichshowed that bostaurus had the highest genetic diversity. Usually, more genetic diversity is most useful for natural selection. The higher genetic diversity of the DGAT1 gene in bostaurus might be related to its extensive adaptability and survival for a polyembryonic animal (Jing-Fen K.et al., 2008). Amino Acid Variation and Genetic Effects Higher polymorphism was observed among species than within species, after the 20complete amino acid sequences were aligned using the Clustal Omega program implemented in BioEdit software. The stop codons in thesequences of the exon 8, 9in Ovisaries, Capra hircus, bosindicus and Bubalus bubalisare onlyUGA but in bos Taurus there are UGA and UAA.Also the exons of bos Taurus had CAC that code histidine and this codone was shown in the other species. The differences between Bos Taurus and the other species in this study maybe related to difference effects of the DGAT 1 gene one the milk production traits. There is a general consensus in the literature that the alanine to lysine amino acid change (K232A) in exon 8 of the DGAT1 gene is associated with reduced milk production (Spelman et al, 2002; Thaller et al, 2003a; Banos et al, 2008), DNA Divergence and Clustering Analysis The average number of nucleotide substitutions per site (Dxy) of the DGAT1 gene between species is shown in Table3. Dxyis the index of DNA divergence between or among the sequences. The larger D xy has the smaller the genetic distance. Based on Dxy, a phylogenetic tree was constructed for all the species using the UPGMA method (Fig.1). The divergence time among different species was also labeled on the scale bar calculated from the average nonsynonymous nucleotide rate(0.85 9 10 – 9per year, Li and Dan1991). The dendrogram of different species based on the differentiation of the DGAT1gene agreed with the taxonomy of NCBI. The smallest D xy(0.0000) and divergence showed the closest relationship between Sheep and Goat, which basically accords with that of Yang and Yoder ( 2003) and Wildman et al. (2003). The largest D xy(0.0146) and divergence time displayed the earliest differentiation between BosTaurus and Buffalo, Sheep and Goat, with the average value of 0.0087 for all speci es(Table 3, Fig1). Table 3: Average nucleotide substitution per site(Dxy) Fig. 1 Phylogenetic tree of the DGAT1(8,9 Exone)gene among 5 species References Banos, G., Woolliams, J.A., Woodward, B.W., Forbes,A.B. and Coffey, M.P. (2008) Impact of singlenucleotide polymorphisms in Leptin, LeptinReceptor, Growth Hormone Receptor, andDiacylglycerolAcyltransferase (DGAT1) geneloci on milk production, feed, and body energytraits of UK dairy cows. Journal of Dairy Science91: 3190–3200. Cases S, Smith SJ, Zheng YW, Myers HM, Lear SR, Sande E, Novak S, Collins C, Welch CB, Lusis AJ,et al.(1998) Identification of a gene encoding an acyl CoA:diacylglycerolacyltransferase, a key enzyme in triacylglycerol synthesis. ProcNatlAcadSci USA 95:13018-13023 Cases S, Stone SJ, Zhou P, Yen E, Tow B, Lardizabal KD, Voelker T, Farese RV (2001). Cloning of DGAT2, a second mammalian diacylglycerolacyltransferase and related family members. Journal of Biological Chemistry 276:38870–38876. Grisart B, Coppieters W, Farnir F, Karim L, Ford C, Berzi P, Cambisano N, Mni M, Reid S, Simon P, Spelman R, Georges M, Snell R. .( 2002) Positional candidate cloning of a QTL in dairy cattle: Identification of a missense mutation in the bovine DGAT1 gene with major effect on milk yield and composition.Genome Research.12, 222-231. Grisart B, Farnir F, Karim L, Cambisano N, Kim J, Kvasz A, Mni M, Simori P, Frere J, Coppieters W,et al.(2004) Genetic and functional confirmation of the causality of the DGAT1 K232A quantitative trait nucleotide in affecting milk yield and composition. ProcNatlAcadSci USA 101:2308-2403 Jing-Fen K., Xiang-Long L., Rong-Yan Z., Lan-Hui L., Fu-Jun F. and Xiu-Li G.(2008)Bioinformatics Analysis of Lactoferrin Gene for SeveralSpecies.Biochem Genet 46:312–322 Kaupe B, Winter A, Fries R and Erhardt G (2004) DGAT1 polymorphism inBosIndicusandBostauruscattle breeds. J Dairy Res 71:182-187. KharratiKoopaei H, Mohammad Abadi MR, Ansari Mahyari S, EsmailizadehKoshkoiyeh A,Tarang AR, Potki P. (2012) Effect of DGAT1 variants on milk composition traits in Iranian Holstein cattlepopulation. Animal Science Papers and Reports. 3, 231-239. Kuhn CH, Thaller G, Winter A, Bininda-Emonds O, Kaupe B, Erhardt G, Bennewitz J, Schwerin M and Fries R (2004) Evidence for multiple alleles at the DGAT1 locus better explains a quantitative trait locus with major effect on milk fat content in cattle. Genetics 167:1873-1881. Ripoli MV, Corva P, Giovambattita G. (2006) Analysis of a polymorphism in the DGAT1 gene in 14 cattlebreeds through PCR-SSCP methods. Research Veterinary Science. 80, 287-290 Smith SJ, Cases S, Jensen DR, Chen HC, Sande E, Tow B, Sanan DA, Raber J, Eckel RH and FareseJr RV (2000) Obesity resistance and multiple mechanisms of triglyceride synthesis in mice lacking Dgat. Nat Genet 25:87-90. Spelman RJ, Ford CA, McElhinney P, Gregory GC and Snell RG (2002) Characterization of the DGAT1 gene in the New Zealand dairy population. J Dairy Sci 85:3514-3517. Tajima F (1983) Evolutionary relationship of DNA sequences in finite populations. Genetics 105:  437–460 Thaller G, Kuhn C, Winter A, Ewlad G, Bellmann O, Wegner J, Zuhlke H and Fries R (2003) DGAT1, a new positional and functional candidate gene for intramuscular fat deposition in cattle. Anim Genet 34:354-357. Winter A, Kramer W, Werner F, Kollers S, Kata S, Durstewitz G, Buitkamp J, Womack W, Thaller G and Fries R (2002) Association of a lysine-232/alanine polymorphism in a bovine gene encoding acyl-CoA:diacylglycerolacyltransferase (DGAT1) with variation at a quantitative trait locus for milk fat content. ProcNatlAcadSci USA 99:9300-9305.

Cold Fusion Research Paper -- Energy Research Papers

Cold Fusion Research Paper As the world becomes more aware of the growing need for a more abundant energy supply, one energy source has been swept under the carpet and virtually ignored. This source is cold fusion. Cold fusion is: â€Å"A reaction that occurs under certain conditions in supersaturated metal hydrides (metals with lots of hydrogen or heavy hydrogen dissolved in them). It produces excess heat, helium, and a very low level of neutrons. In some experiments the host metal has been transmuted into other elements. Cold fusion has been seen with palladium, titanium, nickel and with some superconducting ceramics.† (Infinite) In 1989 Stanley Pons and Martain Fleischmann announced to the press that they had discovered cold fusion. This announcement sent the scientific community in an uproar and the public news media went crazy. The public saw a new source of clean energy that had very little environmental effects. The scientific community saw a paper, which was not peer reviewed, of a scientific principle go out into the public without their consent. While the concept of cold fusion is contrary to the accepted views of physics, this small fact is not what had the community outraged. It was the way Pons and Fleischmann presented the experiment that caused problems. The accepted way of presenting research results within the scientific community is to first publish your experiment to the rest of the scientific community, have other scientist verify your results, and then only after your results have been tested and verified should you go to the press. Science often has experiments that are contrary to the current theory, when these experiments are observed the theory is changed to allow the results to happen and be pre... ...could all be showing the same effects without there being any merit to their clams. The theories behind cold fusion are contrary to popular theory and therefore naturally run up against great resistance. Theories on why cold fusion is observed are still being developed, but a definitive theory is yet to be reached. There is a need for a new theory because cold fusion has been observed in such a verity of experiments that the possibility of error is not probable. The overwhelming number of experiments that have produced an effected dubbed ‘cold fusion’ forces a new theory to be considered. Until a new theory is prescribed the world will have to do without the potential energy source of cold fusion. The world is in need of a clean energy source, therefore a theory must be devised and tested that will allow cold fusion to enter the physics community as a viable

This Way to the Gas

The holocaust, some know it to have been one if the most horrifying and bureaucratic events to be caused by man or a man in history. The man responsible for this event was the great tyrant Adolf Hitler who was responsible for the death of six million Jews, gypsies, poles, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. A polish writer and Auschwitz survivor Tadeusz Borowski buts in great detail how these people were treated in his then and now famous book this way for the gas ladies and gentlemen. Tadek a character in the story shows conflicting attitudes with other in the camp with sympathy, anger, and moral outrage.Borowski’s short stories show mans inhumanity towards man. There are events from the shorty stories that make his descriptions of the horrors of Auschwitz so shocking and memorable. Memories are short stories like the beginning of This Way for The Gas, A Day at Harmenz, The People Who Walked On, and Silence. In the beginning of the first story This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gen tlemen Borowski starts off with supersizing details â€Å"all of us walk around naked†(29). This is all the Jews and other travelers are ticked on the train being promised to a safe place.Then stripped away of their luggage at Canada, â€Å"take your luggage with you†¦pile your stuff near the exits†(37). Then everyone is stripped of his or her clothing â€Å"thousand of naked men shuffle up and down the road†(29). Women would have their hair shaved off, and everyone is given stripped suits. â€Å"Their nude, withered bodies stink of sweat and excrement; their cheeks are hollow†(31). Again very descriptive about how the malnourished and over worked people looked. These people were as close to skeletons as you could get.On page43 a women denies her on child after she cries out â€Å"Mama! Mama! † just so she won’t have to go to the gas champers. Also in this short story Tadek experiences some things that any man or women wouldn’t d ream of doing. â€Å"I seize a corpse by the hand; the fingers close tightly around mine. I pull back†(48). Tadek in this situation in taking all the dead bodies off the ramp and was discussed and freighted with what he saw. At one point he runs off the ramp because the sight was unbearable. The short story in the book A Day at Harmenz also gives graphic details on ow not only Tadek, but also how others tried to survive. The story begins with Tadek doing hard labor for punishment for not getting up. Mrs. Haneczka Is a women that lives in the village of Harmenz that treats him nicely and gives him food. So Tadek seems to like this women but short with others when people ask him to ask her for food. Tadek’s attitude towards other victims of the camp is expressed there. â€Å"When your time comes to go to the gas, ill help you along personally, and with great pleasure†(53).Tadek showing extreme and hate towards Becker because he believes he was a camp senior at a J ewish camp out side of Poznan and had his own son killed for stealing. Could you blame Tadek for being mad? When the time came for Becker to go to the cremo Tadek actually felt a little sympathy for him. Another example of brutality being shown was in on part of the story a man named Ivan had stole a goose and was furiously whipped, â€Å"the whip hissed. Deep, bloody gashes stood out on Ivan’s face†(79).Another important short story in the book was The People Who Walked On. In the story there’s a shift in tone, at least in the beginning of the story. The story opens up in a peaceful setting; building a soccer field. This is the total opposite then the frenzied horror of the first story. A soccer game on the outside of the fence on a warm day and inside the fence was hard labor. There is a women in the story that secretly has a child Tadek looks at the child and whispered to the mother, â€Å"what a pretty child†(89). â€Å"All you know is pretty!It can die at any moment†(89). The mother is not so happy about the birth of her own child but worried that it’ll be a matter of time before it dies from the gas champers. After that Tadek walks away as if it’s not his concern. This shows not only Tadek’s sudden change of feelings towards this women and her child, but shows the worry in the peoples eyes they have of thinking when the day will come for them to be sent to the gas. The story Silence was somewhat of a turning point in the book that has conflicting instincts of forgiveness vs. evenge. The Americans with the freedom are oblivious of how the prisoners felt or had to deal with in the camps. The statement Silence is about the freedom of the prisoners. In this story Borowski also suggest that human beings have a need for vengeance. â€Å" With hate dragged him into a dark ally†¦ they began tearing at him with greedy hands†(161). The quote shows great detail on how they take their anger and hatr ed on the S. S. soldiers how treated them like dogs. This even tells how the camp drove them to insanity.Not event the motivated speech by the American on page 163 could stop the prisoners from trampling the S. S. solider to death, showing how deep their hate went. Borowski along with other writers who have written about the holocaust serve a good purpose. That purpose is remembrance. Remembering tragic events like this is important because it helps us know and appreciate life that we have now. It’s important that the past things like this should be recognized so we wont be doomed to repeat it.

My favorite things Essay

It is often said that the best things in life are free, I, for one, fully agree with the statement. To me, “best” does not imply the most beautiful or glamorous, or the most indulgent or heavenly, but it is those things which I held to be the most valuable and precious in my life. Most people would choose to write about their role model (usually their mother), or the sunset, or even the rain. Some would write about food, others about clothes. I, on the other hand, have “favourite” things of a very different kind. It might sound strange, but my favourite things are: my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my ears, and my hands. Although they are nothing out of the ordinary (no unfortunately I havenÂ’t been blessed with aquamarine eyes, or perfectly pouting lips), these features are my favourite things because of their ability to evoke in me experience of pure, unadulterated bliss. Take my eyes, for instance. People say that oneÂ’s eyes are the window to oneÂ’s soul. Then I must have a fairly bleak, run-of-the mill type of soul, for what you will see when you look at my eyes are two dark-brown, round buttons. They do not exude any magnetism; neither do they give off an aura of mystery and melodrama. But, they have been the rolls with which I have been able to witness many a beautiful sunset. The sun spreads its mosaic of colour on the horizon, amidst wisps of drifting clouds, as hues of russet pink and violet glisten across the sapphire sky. Then, darkness tears the sky asunder, as day slips into night, providing a canvas for the vast constellation of stars that sparkle majestically, illuminated by the glow of the moon. Serenity fills my souls and soothes my mind as the magnificence and splendour of the sunset captives me. My next favourite thing is my nose, a feature that quite dominant on my visage, conspiracy exhibiting its own sense of prominence. I assume that it could serve as a rather good model to demonstrate inclined planes in a Physics practical or even gradient in Analytical Geometry. However, I hold my nose in high esteem for the many delectable scents that it allows me to smell: the subtle scent of a delicate flower that tickles the nostrils like a gentle breeze; a calming perfume that comforts my heart; a beautiful fragrance that is soft yet intense; subtle powerful, aromatic blends that  engulf the nostrils with sweet smell. Not much can be said about my mouth. Although my upper lip is a perfectly shaped CupidÂ’s bow, my lower lip seems to have natural Botox. I would also have preferred my lips to be more of a rosy-plink colour, rather than the dull mauve that they are. However, all disappointments disappear when I consider the heavenly taste of chocolate mousse that has passed through these same lips- the feeling of pleasure and contentment that engulfs my entire being as the rich taste intoxicates my sense, is unmatchable. The sensation of sweetness soaks into my taste buds, as it slowly oozes down my throat and into my oesophagus. The last of my favourite things are my hands, which are preceded by skinny elongated arms, both of which could be used rather effectively in a Geography lesson to teach the concept of a river and its many tributaries, due to the map of the deep-blue veins that run their course along the inside of my arms. Yet, this ghostly sight is forgotten when I remember the soothing feeling of a long, hot bath and the silky sensation of warm soap bubbles against my skin. All stress and tension drains away into the soapy water and my body feels rejuvenated and invigorated, the mind floating upwards like a soap bubble, into another realm. So these are my favourite “things”. Of course, they come with their own imperfection but I am nevertheless extremely grateful for hem. My favourite things bring me feelings of joy, love, and achievements, success, giving, and caring, all of which cannot be seen or even touched. They can only be felt with the heart.