Reading Test - 1

The westerners treat death as a

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

Which of the following approximates a NDE?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

Choose the word most opposite in meaning to the word 'Fragile', as used in the passage.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

What is/are the only thing(s) that give(s) meaningful identity to our lives?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

We just cannot fix

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

How many years has Zhu been making violins?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

Which of the following professions did Zhu consider?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

How many international awards has Zhu won so far?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

The great age of the violin-makers was

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

China's musical instruments are otherwise known worldwide to be

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

All the following are true about Zhu except

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

Leary's idea of replacing human memory with a computerised one, is compared with

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

Zhu has been making violins privately since

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

The distinguishing feature of Zhu's instruments is that they are

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

A person who has a NDE, experiences all the following except

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

According to the passage when will computers with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain be developed?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

Zhu's violins are not stated to be sought in

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

Who or what is a ¢¢real life ghost"?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

Which of the following persons is not mentioned in the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

Choose the word most similar in meaning to the word 'flitted', as used in the passage.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

Choose the word most similar in meaning to the word 'accolade', as used in the passage.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

Choose the word most similar in meaning to the word 'postulate', as used in the passage.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

Choose the word most similar in meaning to the word ‘reluctantly’, as used in the passage.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.

We can make contact with the dead by going into the works of

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

Choose the word most opposite in meaning to the word 'Parried', as used in the passage.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

My father died twice. The first time was in an ambulance as he rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes before the paramedics were able to revive him. Afterwards, he described a vision he had as he lay without a pulse in the speeding ambulance. He saw his brother Joe, who had passed away some years earlier, dressed in flowing white robes sitting on a kind of throne at the top of hill. As my father approached, Joe was laughing uproariously and waving his hand, urging him to turn around and go back. The second time my father died was about three years later. Again it was his heart that failed him. This time, though his brother Joe wasn¢t there to wave him back to this world.

What my father encountered in the back of that ambulance was a classic example of a near death experience (NDE). According to statistics compiled by the International Association for Near-Death studies some 35-40% of people who have had a close brush with death later report a NDE. They commonly tell of a feeling that the self has left the body a sensation of moving through a dark space or tunnel a vision of golden or white light and the receipt in some form of the message "your time has not yet come."

Are NDEs evidence for life after death or are they just the last, desperate projections of the dying brain? While modem science can explain why we age, it tells us very little about why we die, much less about what happens if anything after death. "In death, science is pitted against an impenetrable information barrier", says David Darling, an astronomer and physicist who has written several books on death and dying. "When we die, each of us makes a solo flight across that barrier and gives up all possibility of sending back news of what we find."

Many people don't require hard evidence about what's on the other side. They are satisfied with the explanations provided for millennia by the world's religions. But for those not blessed with religious faith, science may never be able to prove whether the NDE is a news flash from the hereafter or just one of the mind's grandest illusions. Darling suggests there are two events that approximate death: the near death experiences itself and the memory loss suffered by victims of Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. "Losing your memory is perhaps as close as we can come to death without actually dying", he says. "The person is dead because the memories are gone. And memories are the only things that give meaning and identity to our lives."

If the difference between life and death is a question of memory, could death's sting be parried by replacing the fragile human memory with an infallible computerized one? In his book Design for Dying completed earlier this year before he died from prostate cancer, psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary explored various strategies for achieving immortality. One of the most promising tactics, he suggested is to transfer an individual's consciousness into a supercomputer before death. This could be done by using multimedia technologies (video, audio, CDs) to record all your thoughts, feelings and experience onto a computer equipped with artificial intelligence. The result: a real life ghost in the machine. Endowed with all your memories, the new computerized you would be able to chat and interact with people just as you would-except it would be doing so long after you had died.

The idea is not as far-out as it seems. According to Chris Winter, Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson, futurologists at British Telecom's Advanced Research Department, computers (or “soulcatchers") with storage and processing capacities equivalent to the human brain will be developed within the next 20 years. "We will be able to transfer human minds into some machine form", says Pearson. Perhaps our only chance of making full use of such technology is to become part of the technology itself.

But are these intimations of immortality real? The silicon soul described by Leary is actually not a captured consciousness at all, but an elaborate interactive home video of history. As useful and entertaining as that might be, it’s a far cry from life after death. And how big an improvement is it over say the good old-fashioned book? We can already make contact with some of the world's great lost simply by dipping into the novels of James Joyce or the poems of John Donne.

In his book, ‘Dancing on the Grave’, British anthropologist Nigel Barely describes a trip to Africa during which a group of tribal elders explain their idea of reincarnation by visiting a local brewery. “You could see returned bottles through a plate glass window", Barely writes “entering via one door, whirling from machine to machine being endlessly refilled with squirting beer relabelled and pushed out through another door.... life, death, spirit and body”. Now you have seen (the elders) said. Though it comes from Africa, this little episode is a fitting metaphor for Western attitudes towards death: the body is a machine and death is a spanner in the works. But you don't have to postulate the existence of an eternal soul to acknowledge that there may be some things in the universe, like death, that we just can't fix. Let's not be too proud that our technological prowess may one day bring immortality. “Never send to know for whom the computer crashes, it crashes for thee”.

For how many dollars did Zhu sell his first violin?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully to answer the given question. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answer the question.

Three years ago, a little-known craftsman from the dusty backstreets of southern China's Guangzhou city caught the world of classical musicians off guard. Zhu Ming-Jiang was awarded a gold medal from the prestigious Violin Society of America - its highest accolade - for an instrument handcrafted in the tradition of Italian masters of the 17th century, the great age of violinmakers. Seasoned music critics were aghast. China was one of the world’s biggest exporters of violins, but its instruments were notorious for their inferiority and sold by the truckload primarily because they were cheap. That general picture won't change overnight, since Zhu makes just 10 violins a year, but at least China can now lay claim to producing a contemporary equivalent to the famed Stradivarius.

Zhu's life has been full of surprising turns. The second son of two accountants, Zhu was forced as a teenager to abandon his education and like tens of thousands of other intellectual young Chinese during the 1960s and 70s, was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by peasants. "I wanted to be a carpenter, even a painter", says Zhu. "But I was labouring in fields of sugarcane and looking for a way out”. Zhu seized his chance to escape the rural backwaters of Panyu County just south of Guangzhou two years later in 1976 when China set up the Guangzhou Musical Instruments School. He was one of the 25 students chosen nationwide because he had shown promise as a sculptor of wood, an essential skill in the delicate crafting of musical instruments.

Zhu rapidly improved his skills and by 1986 he had graduated from the school and was working for the Guangzhou Musical Instruments Research Institute. Zhu's craft gained international recognition because senior Communist Party cadres often entered his violins in international competitions. They also flitted abroad to collect the prizes giving him little opportunity to enjoy the acclaim. By that time Zhu was secretly making violins at home because he wanted to use his own name in competitions and he felt that many of the violins produced by the institute were of poor quality.

Zhu struck out on his own in 1991, setting up a tiny workshop in his suburban apartment. In addition to the Violin Society of America’s gold medal, Zhu has collected nine other international awards and musicians in the United States, Europe and Asia now keenly seek his instruments. Zhu won't reveal the secrets of his craft which hehas been practicing for 21 years. While he sold his first violin for sixty dollars, he won't reveal his prices. Like the secrets of his craft, these  too are secret to all but serious potential buyers. "Price?", Zhu asks. “What price the sound of a violin, that makes you feel that you have just tasted sweet spring water after a long journey over the mountains?" For a country boy who reluctantly gave up carpentry to court the respect of composers and musicians, the rewards of that journey have been sweet indeed.