In A Room Hidden From View

My lecture starts at 4, its now 2:15......... and only 4 hours before I see Fiona again.

Its blogger time!!

Anyhow, I thought I would just make a post of general rambling. There hasn't been any real issues lately for me to complain about so I thought I would tell you something interesting.

The Yangtze River is the longest river in China. Every few years this mighty river floods, resulting in ten's of thousands of deaths, thousands of homes destroyed, and many injured. The Chinese government plan to build a dam in the river at Three Gorge. They will also be able to use it as a hydropower station. With this one plant they can generate more electricity then all of Australia does.
This project has been in the planning stages since the 1950's. They only started construction in 1994. Even after all that planning and designing there is still major uproar about it. Its also been responsible for the massacre of protesting uni students in China.
You might be wondering what's the big deal? Won't the dam save thousands of lives and homes? And won't it also produce one tenth of China's power needs in and economical manner?
There are huge benefits for having this dam, but all great things come at a cost. A cost of US$11 billion. Yes that's right $11 000 000 000! This is one of the largest and most expensive engineering projects in the world. The cost isn't only money though, oh no. It gets better :-D

2 cities, 140 towns, and 1351 villages will have to be moved. If they stay where they are they will be covered in water by 2009 due to the dam's reservoir. Thats 1.1 million people to be moved. So you can see why people are annoyed.

Anyway, that's what I learnt in uni this week. We have an assignment on the various issues that can be generated by a project of this magnitude.

So, its back to surfing the internet for me. I don't want to bore you with anymore writing. Ill put some pics up soon.

Bye bye.