Introduction (for first-time visitors): 1. This site is meant to make your surfing life easier by putting everything that you might need within easy reach (hence its title "The World At Your Fingertips"). Its topics range from current talking points and today's world headlines from sources such as the BBC, CNN or Huffington Post to computer tips and useful software. You need to know what time it is now in some foreign city? Or its weather conditions? You need to know what some foreign currency is worth? You need to find a street map of your hotel location? Or look up a new word in an English dictionary? These, and more, can be accessed from the navigational menu on the left or the top menu bar (dropdown menu). But if you need to check the public holidays in a particular country or your country's embassy in a foreign country or need to convert lengths, temperatures or weights then go to this page ("The World's My Home"). If you love songs, you will be able to listen to them non-stop while you are working. Go here for this. Or if you feel like singing those lovely evergreens of your adolescence (or even some recent hits), hop over to Sing With The Lyrics or The Greatest French Songs Of All Time. And the green menu bar at the top takes you straight to your email, Facebook, Skype, PayPal or other accounts with just one click.
2. Besides news and songs, travel has an important part in this site. For active tourists, or simply armchair/virtual travellers, there are lots of tips and photos of top tourist destinations in Europe (Athens, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Venice, Paris, Madrid, Rome, London, Prague, the French Riviera, Geneva, Copenhagen, Oslo, Andalucia, etc.), China (Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Hangzhou), Malaysia (Penang, etc.) and even Morocco (Marrakesh, Casablanca, etc.). In each city you will be shown in words and pictures the "must-see" places as well as the things you must absolutely experience even if you don't have much time to spend there. More.... 3. There is also a full course covering all aspects of learning Pinyin, which is the romanized version of spoken Mandarin. This unorthodox course is really like no other in that a few grammatical rules which have always been an obstacle to foreign learners of Mandarin have been "bent" in order to make the study of the Chinese language easier - without sacrificing much in terms of making yourself understood. It starts from the known to the unknown by giving equivalent English sounds for pinyin spellings such as xi, zh ou q. It is indeed possible to speak Chinese Mandarin without knowing a single Chinese character (I know, more than one prospective student have been put off simply at the sight of these intimidating Chinese characters!) More.... 4. You will also find here a complete Basic Malay language course with 64 lessons and audio to help the individual learner at home. Although the Malay language is used mainly in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, it is also quite similar to the Indonesian language. More.... 5. Another of the highlights of this site is a Bilingual Malay-English and English-Malay Dictionary. You will find it here. 6. Finally there is the automatic Google machine translator to allow instantaneous translation of this website into some 50 languages for non-English speaking visitors. You will find it at the top left-hand corner of every page (under "Select Language"). As you know, machine translations can be hilarious at times, especially when they concern idiomatic expressions, but nevertheless they still do give the gist of what a page is all about. If you don't like the look of it, just click on "Show original" in the "Google translate" banner at the top of the page.
Note: To find this site easily from wherever you are (cybercafe, public library or airport) just type pgoh13 in any search engine or type its full URL pgoh13.com (pgoh13 dotcom) in the site address box. Please note that it is pgoh13.com and NOT pgoh.com (without the 13) which has nothing at all to do with this website.
