Part 2

A recorded message about buying tickets from a booking agency

Thank you for calling ATS Advanced Ticketing System, the call system for all your entertainment needs.

Our automated telephone service is designed to answer your questions quickly and easily.

The ATS office in the Regency Theatre is open Monday to Thursday from 10 am - 5 pm and on Friday and Saturday till 8 pm. For online bookings and detailed program listings, check our website at www.atstix.com.

That’s spelled A-T-S-T-I-X.

Please listen to the choices available. You may press your choice as soon as you hear it to get more information.

For sporting events including the Weston International Tennis Classic, press 1.

For the Formula 1 Grand Prix, press 2.

For classical music including the upcoming Philharmonic Orchestra series, press 3.

For theatre and dance, press 4.

For other enquiries, please hold the line.

(Pause)

Ticket prices for the Formula 1 Grand Prix on the 10th - 14th March are as follows:

General Admission

Thursday $27 Concession $10

Friday $37 Concession $15

Saturday $55 Concession $35

Sunday $70 Concession $65

Concession rates apply to children under 14 and to students, seniors and pensioners on presentation of a valid card.

Grandstand seating

Four-day tickets covering the 6 main grandstands cost $299.

However, Pit Straight tickets are $350 and seats at the Chicane cost $450 each.

Children under 3 are admitted free to the general admission area and children under 14 are eligible for concession prices.

Gates open at 8 am Thursday and Friday and 7:30 Saturday and Sunday. Events begin at 9:00.

Alcohol, ice boxes, cans, bottles and animals are not allowed on site.

There are no refunds or exchanges.

On each ticket a $2.50 booking fee applies.

To make a booking you must have a valid credit card. To listen again, press 1.

To make a booking or to talk to a ticket agent, press 2. Your call is in our queue.

You can expect to wait about 3 minutes.

Part 3

A discussion among three students, who are organising an international film festival at their college

C: Thanks for coming to this meeting on such short notice, Anna and Veronica. It looks like we have just become the organising committee for this year’s international film festival. We’ve all just met so perhaps we should start by an introduction with a bit of background from each of us.

A: OK. I’m Anna. I finished three years of a Languages degree in Sweden, where I come from. This year I decided to study overseas to get to know a different part of the world. I’m also a big fan of European cinema, especially French and Italian. Those are the languages I majored in along with English. To me, film is a great way to learn about the rest of the world. I was in the film club at my university so when I saw the notice asking for volunteers, I thought it would be a good way to meet people and get involved in something I really enjoy.

V: Thanks, Anna. My name is Veronica and I come from Italy. I’m doing graduate studies in English Literature. I went to some of the films in the festival last year and enjoyed them. I especially liked the video interviews. That was when I decided to get involved. I used to do film reviews for our student newspaper back home.

C: Hi, I'm: Chris from Scotland and I’m in 4th year Journalism. Cinema is my hobby. Last year I joined the organising committee, just like you have now, and somehow, this year I’ve ended up in charge. I'm actually able to use my coordinating work on the festival towards a credit for one of my courses. I have to write up a report on the festival with recommendations so that’s an extra motivation for me. So I hope this is going to be a good experience for us all. OK. Where would you like to start?

A: How about a general overview of the festival? I don’t really know much about it.

C: Well, the film festival was started by International Students’ Society five years ago and has grown every year. It is held over 4 nights during study break, Wednesday to Saturday. Normally we show 3 films a night. Last year we tried to choose films from different parts of the world that fit together in some way. Maybe a similar theme. Or we could feature a type of film like action films or science fiction.

(Pause)

A: Who picks the films?

C: It’s up to us, on the committee, to decide.

V: You mean we get to pick all the films ourselves? What a hard decision! There are so many to choose from.

C: Well, that’s the fun part. We have this catalogue of independent distributors. The films are listed by language and have a short summary. We just have to go through it to find a good combination of films that will attract an audience.

A: Veronica mentioned something about interviews. How does that fit in?

C: We set up cameras in the foyer of the theatre and did live interviews before, during intermission and after the screening. Anyone from the audience could come up and talk about the film. The broadcasting and journalism school set it up and ran the interviews. They were shown on big screens around the lobby and in the theatre. It went over really well. We had a long line up of students waiting to be interviewed on TV. Everybody wanted their minute of fame.

A: Great idea!

C: Yeah, it worked really well. We should certainly do something similar again.

V: Maybe even develop the idea further. Like a website with audience reviews and discussion1 so we can get as much participation and involvement as possible.

C: Hey, that’s a good idea!

A: Can I ask a question? None of the films are in English, right? Are they dubbed or subtitled?

C: Well, we do occasionally choose a film in English but only from unusual places where the dialect is so strong they sometimes need subtitles - like the Caribbean or even Scotland! The majority of films in the festival are foreign language, dubbed in English. We’ve learned from experience that students don’t like reading subtitles. Maybe they read too much already. Whatever the reason the subtitled films get smaller audiences so we avoid them as much as possible.

V: So how large an audience can we expect and how much does it cost to get in?

C: It costs $5 per film or a $20 pass for the whole event - all 12 films for the real movie fan. We would have broken even last year except for a bad storm on the Friday night - we almost had to cancel the whole thing. But overall, we had a good turnout - more than 2,000 people in 4 days.

V: That’s what I was wondering about - the financial part. Where does the funding come from? What kind of budget do we have?

C: The festival is subsidised by the student council. We generate money through advertising and through admission charges. We’ll go over the budget in detail a little later. But we’ve got lots of work to do in the meantime.

A: I guess we have to start pretty soon.

C: Well, I think by the first of March at the latest, we need to select all the films. Then we have to find some advertisers to sponsor the event -that shouldn’t be too hard. We’ll just start with last year’s list. Our deadline for that should be the middle of March. By the end of March we need to design the program. Then we can get posters made up and distributed in April.

V: Like you said, we need some clever promotion -something to generate interest and get people talking. We have 4 months to get ready. It should be enough time.

C: OK, where do we start?

A: Let’s start by talking about films - since that is the best part - and see what we come up with. What was the best film you saw last year?

Part 4

A talk given by a lecturer to a group of civil engineering students on the reed bed system for sewage treatment

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today about what is now called the reed bed sewage treatment system. This system uses naturally occurring reeds to treat domestic and industrial waste. It’s an environmentally friendly alternative to normal systems. You all know what reeds are like, don’t you? -those tall plants with hollow stems that grow in wet places ... like marshes, for example.

Here's how the system works. First of all, an artificial marsh is created. To do this, holes are dug about 1 metre deep and usually rectangular in shape. They are then lined with clay or plastic and the liner is covered with gravel. After that, a system of tubing is laid, with holes in it and more gravel is added to cover that. Finally reeds are planted in the bed.

The sewage is brought to settling tanks. From there it is distributed to the roots of the reeds through the tubing. Note that the waste material enters the beds underground and remains underground. The reeds conduct oxygen very efficiently through their stems to the roots system. Here, bacteria work to reduce the waste material to basic elements. What comes out of the artificial marsh is water that has been cleaned through a natural process. The purified water leaves the reed bed through a simple outflow pipe.

The water that comes out has to be tested. Sometimes it is held in a pond until it evaporates or soaks into the ground. Sometimes, after testing, the water is discharged directly into streams and rivers.

(Pause)

The reed bed system originated in Germany in the 1970s and installations have been built in a number of countries throughout the world. To give you an idea of the size and appearance of a reed bed installation, an area of 3 by 5 metres approximately would be adequate for a single house. It would look like a pond overgrown with reeds. There are cities with 150,000 people in Germany whose entire sewage treatment requirements are served by reed bed installations which extend for 10 - 20 hectares.

There are two wonderful environmental advantages. First of all, reed bed systems are natural composters. As time passes high grade soil builds up in the beds. The soil can be removed and used for agricultural purposes. Soil produced from waste containing heavy metals would, of course, have to be tested and the toxic material removed by chemical processes.

An additional advantage is that the reed bed can function exactly as a marsh, providing a healthy natural home or habitat for waterfowl and other birds, insects, reptiles and mammals.

But there are practical advantages to a reed bed system over existing sewage treatment plants as well. At all levels the cost is lower than for normal systems. Labour costs are a fraction of the costs of a conventional system. Typically a large scale reed bed installation will cost 10% less than a mechanical system. They require little maintenance and unlike mechanical systems, the efficiency of reed beds increases over time.

But before we go any further, you must have some questions? Maybe this sounds too good to be true. S1: That's exactly what I wanted to ask. If these systems have so many benefits, why aren’t they more popular? Why don’t we see them everywhere?

L: As I said, the technology is now almost 40 years old, Demonstration projects of all types have been built and monitored and are slowly convincing regulators of the advantages of the

system. But you have to understand that regulating authorities are by nature conservative and resist change. Typically there is a lot of opposition to these systems - by manufacturers, and by everyone involved in maintaining the conventional systems. Reed bed systems require fewer staff to operate so there would be a decline in the workforce. Therefore unions would resist the change as well.

S2: What happens to reed beds in winter? Does the efficiency decrease?

L: The above ground part of the plants die back in cold weather but the roots remain alive and active and the system continues to work just as effectively in winter. As soon as the weather warms up, new reeds appear and grow quickly.

S3: Is there a problem with mosquitoes in these ponds?

L: Well, they are not exactly ponds, with standing water. The beds look more like a field, covered with long grass. The soil is moist but not like a swamp so there would be no more mosquitoes than in any other field. Remember, the effluent enters the beds underground and remains underground.

OK. Let’s get into some of the technical details now and I’ll answer questions as they come up.