short story

I saw a man who was a bit thin on top. From his appearance, I smelt a rat. I heard an alarm ringing from a bank. I guessed money had fallen off the back of a lorry and so I rang 999 to describe the scene to the operator. After my report, I heard another alarm. Oh, I had just had forty winks.

Idioms story

Peter and his friends held a stag party last Saturday. Andy, one of Peter’s friend gate-crashed, therefore, all of them were down in the mouth. As Andy brought a delicious cheese cake and bottle of house wine, they were full of beans and shared a wonderful night. And the friends of Peter offer to go Dutch.

Reply enquiry

Dear Mr. White,
Thank you for your enquiry and interest in our product.

Our latest model is the AT400. Our standard minimum order is 5,000 computers. The price is $8,000 per unit which excludes the transportation cost. An extra transportation fee of 5% of the invoice amount will be charged.

In addition, the manuals we provided are in European and Asian languages. We offer a 12 months guarantee. Exclusivity is possible only if a customer agrees to order 100,000 units each year for the next three years.

Finally, goods are shipped about 30 days after a firm order is received. For first time customers, we need a 50% pre-payment, 25% on delivery and 25% 30 days after delivery together with a bank guarantee. Thereafter, it would be more flexible in payment for future orders.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.Thank you for your kind attention.

Yours sincerely,
Agnes Rita

Order for model AT500

Dear IBM

We are Broadway International Limited, www.broadway.com.hk., a large chain of computer stores in Hong Kong. We are emailing you off your website, which I found through Google.

Through your homepage we are interested in one of your latest model AT500, which has just been brought out. We would like to order 4,000 computers as a first order. Do you offer a quantity discount? We hope you can offer us about $8,000 per piece including the shipping costs.

In addition, most of our customers are local citizen and visitors come from Mainland China, therefore we hope we can have the manual in Chinese version. Also, we want a guarantee of 15 months.

Last but not least, we want to become the only agent of your company in Asia Region, so that inside the market there are no competitors and other stores can sell this model. We are pleased to prepare a 30% pre-payment, 30% on delivery and 40% 3 months after delivery.

We look forward to hearing from you and the delivery as soon as possible.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Agnes Rita

Thanks for your help in London

Subject : Thanks for your help in London

Your assistance in the interesting conference on the air industry is highly appreciated. I had the great pleasure to meet your wonderful UK sales team and look forward to seeing them in the Dubai office at the end of the year.

Baltic States Development

Subject : Baltic States Development

Thanks for sending me all the information about market changes in the Baltic and I’ve forwarded it to Krista Kilvet, our new representative in Estonia. We hope you could give a presentation about the political and economic background in the region to our Board at the Head Office. Look forward to hearing from you ASAP.

Confirmation of meeting

Subject : Confirmation of Meeting

As spoken this morning, our next meeting on 4 January at 2pm at the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel at TST is confirmed. After the meeting, I’ll dine with you and see you there.

Dear Mrs. Chow,

Hong Kong is a shopping and dinning paradise. Every year, there are many tourists visiting Hong Kong. However, other Southeast Asian countries have begun to attract these tourists. In order to keep Hong Kong being attractive, we should be aware of our strengths and weaknesses in tourism.

Firstly, the main problem we are facing is air pollution. Our environment seems not to be suitable for sun and sand holidays. Secondly, the transportation fee is relatively high.

As the main cause of air pollution is from the factories in Guangdong province, we suggest discussing it with government officers of this province. For the problem of high transportation fee, we suggest to give a free one day pass to every tourist so that they could enjoy free trips.

One of our strengths is that we have quality tourism service. Many shops can provide genuine products with clearly displayed prices as well as product information. As long as we can ensure superb customer service with front-line staff possessing extensive product knowledge, our reputation of shopping and dinning paradise could be maintained.

I hope the above information would be useful to you. Should you have any queries, please feel free to contact me.

Yours truly,
Agnes Elaine

Toursim on the island of Bozburun

Dear Mr. Sun,

A report on tourism on the Bozburun Island

I have visited the Bozburun Island for a week. To be honest, I am not sure that Bozburun is a good place for tourism as there are two problems with it. First of all, it seems to be only suitable for sun and sand holidays. Actually, there isn’t any shopping mall on the island and tourists wouldn’t spend much on shopping.

Although money has been a bit benefit, we might be suffered from poor quality construction. Also, I’m afraid that some unspoilt areas would be destroyed by pollutions.

In order to tackle the problems that I have mentioned, it would be better if we could improve the products and increase the interest of tourists to visit the Bozburun island. Perhaps we could develop cultural tourism to attract tourists from other areas. Moreover, it seems that we could improve our customer service by providing more training to our staff.

I hope this report will be useful to you. For further information, please feel free to contact me.


Regards,
Agnes Elaine

Agnes Crystal Jessica

Hi Peter,

I’ve got your email and I’m disappointed that you can’t join us in the coming conference. The conference is very important to us and if you can rearrange your schedule, please try your best to join us. Probably, you can attend the conference after your business trip.

Hopefully, we can get more suppliers information and this will be beneficial for our future development. If you really have difficulties for the rearrangement, please let me know asap.

Hope to see you at the conference.

Agnes Crystal Jessica

Hi Johnny,

I’m sorry that I can’t go to a conference next weekend with you. It’s because I should go to Shanghai on a business trip on the same weekend. I’m dealing with a Shanghai company on a joint venture business. Have you heard about it? Chinese people emphasize “relationship” and so I should go to Shanghai to establish this relationship. Please send me a copy of the conference minutes when you are back. Nevertheless, I will join you on your next trip.

Thanks

Agnes Crystal Jessica

Agnes Crystal Jessica: Christmas Party

Dear Mr. Hanks,

We are planning to organize a Christmas party on December 23. Our aims of this activity are to celebrate as well as reinforce staff relationships.

We propose the party to be held at the Hong Kong Hotel and invite all the staff. There will be lucky draws and a Santa Claus will present gifts to the participants. Buffet dinner with different kinds of Christmas food such as Turkey will be provided. The party will start at 19:00 and end at 24:00.

Budget is listed as below:
Total
1) Buffet dinner $400 per person $20,000
2) Gifts $10,000
3) Miscellaneous $2,000
Grand $32,000

Would you please make your decision on our proposal? If you agree with the plan, please inform us as soon as possible. Since it is December now, many arenas in hotels are reserved at the month end. If we can get your approval, we will start our work immediately.

Best regards,
Agnes Crystal Jessica