Your next Saturday night takeaway could be brought to you by a robot after a major food delivery company announced plans to use automated vehicles to transport meals. Europe's biggest online takeaway food company Just Eat has partnered with Starship Technologies to deliver food with robots on the streets of London later this month. “Nobody has ever done deliveries with land-based robots,” said Allan Martinson, the chief operating officer of Starship.
The robot courier can travel up to 4 miles per hour for about 10 miles. It uses a GPS signal and nine cameras to navigate(确定方向). Instead of a person arriving at their door, customers could find themselves receiving a notification(通知) on their phone that says a robot is on its way and a code to unlock the automated courier. “Put the code in, the robot opens up, and there's your food,” said David Buttress, chief manager of Just Eat.
The robot, which has so far been tested in Greenwich, Milton Keynes and Glastonbury, costs ￡1 to transport within 3 miles, compared with the ￡3 to ￡6 it costs for a human courier. To date 30 robots have driven nearly 5,000 miles without getting into an accident or finding themselves picked on by passers-by. They have driven in more than 40 cities around the world, including London and Tallinn, Estonia.
An initial worry was how the public would react to robots. But Martinson said the public has been calm when passing the delivery machine on the streets. “The most surprising reaction has been the lack of reaction,” said Martinson.
Another significant fear was that people would disrupt(扰乱) the robots, or try to steal them and their contents. To prevent this, the robot is fitted with nine cameras, two way audio, and movement sensors that send a warning if it is lifted off the ground. And it opens only with a pass code provided to the customer via a notification. “It's much easier to shoplift than it is to steal a robot,” said Martinson.
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Another thing an astronaut has to learn about is eating in space．Food is weightless, just as men are.
Food for space has to be packed in special ways．Some of it goes into tubes that a man can squeeze into his mouth．Bite-sized cookies are packed in plastic.
There is a good reason for covering each bite．The plastic keeps pieces of food from traveling in the spaceship．On the earth very small pieces of food would simply fall to the floor．But gravity doesn't pull them to the floor when they are out of the plastic in a spaceship．They move here and there and can get into a man's eyes or into the spaceship's instruments．If any of the instruments is blocked, the astronauts may have trouble getting safely home.
As astronauts travel on longer space trips, they must take time to sleep．An astronaut can fit himself to his seat with a kind of seat belt. Or, if he wants to, he can sleep in a sleeping bag which is fixed in place under his seat．But be careful he must put his hands under the belt when he goes to sleep．This is because he is really afraid that he might touch one of controls that isn't supposed to be touched until later.
Australian scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in order to cut the greenhouse gases they send out, which is thought to be responsible for global warming.
Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence (肠胃气胀) contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who produce large quantities of the harmful gas.
While the usual image of greenhouse gas pollution is a billowing smokestack, pushing out carbon dioxide, farm animals' passing wind contribute a surprisingly high percentage of total emissions in some countries.
“Fourteen percent of emissions from all sources in Australia are from enteric methane from cattle and sheep,” said Athol Klieve, a senior research scientist with the greensland state government. “And if you look at another country such as New Zealand, which has got a much higher agricultural base, they are actually up around 50 percent,” he said.
Researchers say the bacteria also make the digestive process much more efficient and could potentially save millions of dollars in feed costs for farmers. But it will take researchers at least three years to isolate the bacteria before they can even start to develop a way of transferring it to cattle and sheep.
Another group of scientists, meanwhile, have suggested Australians should farm fewer cattle and sheep and just eat more kangaroos. And about 20 percent of health-conscious Australians are believed to eat the national symbol already.
It's low in fat, it's got high protein levels and it is very clean in the sense that basically it is free-range(放养的) animal,” said Peter Ampt of the University of New South Wales' institute of environmental studies.
Whether it's music, art, stage, screen, restaurant and bar deals, or the great outdoors – there's always something interesting going on in Hong Kong
Tim Yip: Blue – Art, Costumes and Memory
What: A well-known visual artist, costume designer, and art director for stage and film (particularly on his work for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for which he won an Oscar), Tim Yip has been a proud promoter of Eastern aestheticism(唯美主义)for 30 years. For his first large-scale solo exhibition in Hong Kong, Yip explores the nature of human imagination and the depths of the subconscious mind. Organized by Mark Holborn, the exhibition is expected to be praised due to Yip's vision of “New Orientalism”.
Where: HKDI Gallery, Hong Kong Design Institute, 3 King Ling Road, Tiu Keng Leng, Tseung Kwan O
When: Until March 31, 2019
Alice's Adventure at Starlight Garden
What: Introduced last year, this exhibition became a huge hit, with more than 6,000 photos and videos posted online every day. Created by 27 multimedia digital artists from Korea, the exhibition features a 30-foot rabbit hole for visitors to explore the fantasy world made famous in the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This Christmas, New Town Plaza delivers a brand-new interactive digital version of the literary work. In particular, check out the seventh floor, with its bright lighting, glittering mirrors and rose-shaped decorations.
Where: New Town Plaza, 18 Sha Tin Centre Street, Sha Tin
When: Until January 13, 2019
We Travel in Our Minds
What: This exhibition of sculpture aims to present ideas of theatricality, the fantastical, travel and exchange, with figures that take the forms of humans and animals. Made by artist Ethan Murrow, a professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, these dream-like objects are inspired by puppetry (木偶戏), music, trade, navigation and beyond, with mixed effects of materiality, sound and imagination.
Where: Duddell's, Level 3, Shanghai Tang Mansion, 1 Duddell Street, Central
When: Until March 10, 2019
Learning any language is hard, but learning English can be especially challenging. Why? Because native speakers use the language in ways that textbooks could never describe. In particular, words that British people use cause many language students to scratch(JT) their heads.
Here's an example: You happen to hear a Briton calling someone a “wazzock”. But what exactly is a wazzock? This word, in fact, means a foolish person, although there's nothing about it that would help you guess that. There are many strange terms like this in British English - the Oxford English Dictionary would be much smaller without these strange usages filling its pages.
How can these odd words be explained? Part of the answer is the British sense of humor. Britons don't like to take things too seriously, and this is evident through many British words and phrases. For example, to spend a penny means to use the bathroom. It refers to the days when people had to pay a penny to use a public toilet.
In an interview for the BBC's website, British linguist David Crystal suggested there may be historical reasons for the sheer number of odd words and phrases in British English. He thinks that they began in the late 16th and. early 17th centuries. This was a great age for the theatre, when Shakespeare and other writers worked hard to keep up with the demand for new plays. The theatre's popularity also created an incentive (刺激) to invent new words.
With this in mind, perhaps Shakespeare and his peers are to blame for unusual British words such as “codswallop” and “balderdash”—which both, ironically, mean nonsense.
While these strange words may be confusing to non-native speakers, they certainly make studying English a lot more interesting.
Memory, they say, is a matter of practice and exercise. If you have the wish and really make a conscious(自觉的) effort, then you can quite easily improve your ability to remember things. But even if you are successful, there are times when your memory seems to play tricks on you.
Sometimes you remember things that really did not happen. One morning last week, for example, I got up and found that I had left the front door unlocked all night, yet I clearly remember locking it carefully the night before.
Memory "tricks" work the other way as well. Once in a while you remember not doing something, and then find out that you did. One day last month, for example, I was sitting in a barber shop waiting for my turn to get a haircut, and suddenly I realized that I had got a haircut two days before at the barber shop across the street from my office.
We always seem to find something funny and amusing in incidents caused by people's forgetfulness or absent-mindedness. Stories about absent-minded professors have been told for years, and we never get tired of hearing new ones. Unfortunately, however, absent-mindedness is not always funny. There are times when "tricks" of our memory can cause us great trouble.
At the age of eight, Glenn Cunningham was severely injured in a fire. He had major burns over the lower half of his body and was taken to a nearby county hospital.
From his bed, the semi-conscious(半昏迷的)little boy heard the doctor talking to his mother. The doctor told his mother that her son would surely die—which was for the best, really—for the terrible fire had destroyed the lower half of his body.
But somehow, to the amazement of the physician, he did survive. The mother was told that her son was bound to spend a lifetime in a wheelchair.
But this brave little boy was determined that he would walk and even run. But unfortunately, from the waist down, Glenn had no motor ability. His thin, scarred legs just hung there, all but lifeless. Yet his courage that he would walk was as strong as ever.
One sunny day his mother wheeled him out into the yard to get some fresh air. This day, instead of sitting there, he threw himself from the chair. Glenn worked his way to the fence, dragging his legs behind him. Then, step by step, he began dragging himself along the fence, determined that he would walk. He started to do this every day until eventually Glenn did develop the ability first to stand up , then to walk with help, then to walk by himself—and then amazingly—to run. Glenn began to run to school. He ran everywhere as fast as he could. Later in college, Glenn joined the track team where he received the nickname(绰号)the "Kansas Flyer".
1938 witnessed this young man's another amazing achievement. This young man, who was not expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never hope to run, ran the mile in 4 minutes and 4.4 seconds, the world's fastest indoor mile! His persistence paid off.
Since the age of three, Chelsie Hill had dreamed of becoming a dancer. That dream nearly ended one night in 2010. Hill was in a car accident that put her in hospital for 51 days and left her
paralyzed (瘫痪). For most people, that would have destroyed any hope of a dancing career. For Hill, it was the beginning. Far from being a difficult, her wheelchair encouraged her to think a lot of her life and she wanted to prove that she was sill "normal".
"Normal" for her meant dancing. With half of her body taken away, Hill had to move it with hands. It took a lot of learning and patience, but she still made it in her wheelchair with her non-disabled high school dance team.
After graduation from high school in California, Hill wanted to expand (扩展) her dance network to include women like her. She met online the women who had suffered various back injuries but shared the same determination with her.
Hoping to reach more people in a larger city and break down the false belief of wheelchair users, Hill moved to Los Angeles in 2014, formed a team of dancers with disabilities and named it the Rollettes. As she always believes, dancing on wheels can be just as good as foot-based dance.
In disabled dance competitions, all dancers from her team gave great performances and they were having fun. And the audience's cheers, whistles and applause (掌声) suggested that the fun was spreading.
Hill has achieved what many of us never will: her childhood dream. But the Rollettes has helped her find something else just as satisfying. Every year she holds a dance camp, the Rollettes Experience for wheelchair users of all ages to help them find their inner heroines (女英雄). In 2019. over 173 women from ten countries attended the Rolettes Experience. For most of these women, it was the first time they had felt they belonged .Edna Serrano told a reporter that being part of the Rollettes team challenged her to be more independent. “It even gives me the courage to take up driving." she said.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the French explorer, once pointed out, "Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage." Many experts are calling the growing problem of global waste a worldwide health crisis in that pollution from trash is not only harming the world's oceans, air and soil but also endangering people's health as well as the livelihood of all living creatures.
Reduce, reuse, recycle
Such a dilemma raises the question, is there a more responsible way of dealing with trash? Fortunately, there is. Living a zero-waste lifestyle is the way to go. One example of this is what's often called the three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle. Reducing the use of plastic containers as well as reusing and recycling bottles and cans decreases the amount of garbage being sent to landfills. As a result, less money is spent on waste management, and countries' financial burdens are significantly relieved. Such positive effects on an economy is known as a circular economy.
Circular economy
Traditionally, manufacturers would make a product to be used and disposed of by consumers. This linear model of production offered no help in the fight against global waste. Alternatively, a circular economy was introduced. Once a product's value is exhausted, the materials are recycled and returned to manufacturers. The outcome is less waste. One large-scale example of this is happening on the island of Taiwan.
4-in-1 Recycling Program
In 1997, Taiwan established its signature 4-in-1 Recycling Program, consisting of communities, recycling companies, government cleaning teams and the Recycling Fund. Residents separate their recyclable waste. The local government collection teams collect it. Recycling companies buy waste materials from them to make profits. Importers and manufacturers who are responsible for the recyclable products pay a fee into the Recycling Fund. The Recycling Fund is an essential aspect of the program used to subsidize(补贴) the recycling disposal system, support education and research and development as well as finance recycling efforts in the future.
Turning garbage into gold
By following a circular system, more products than ever are being manufactured using recycled materials. Environmentally-friendly decisions like these help to conserve natural resources, reduce pollution, save landfill space and even create new job opportunities. Recycling can truly turn garbage into gold.
Cassandra Warren, a babysitter, was in a rush and feeling a little overcome with work and planning her 200-person wedding. As she was extending invitations for her wedding in the mail one day last year, she hurriedly addressed one to her aunt and uncle in Oregon.
A week later, the invitation came back, with a handwritten note on the return envelope: "I wish I knew you. Congratulations! I've been married for 40 years—it gets better with age." A $ 20 bill was inside.
Cassandra was at a professional crossroads and had been having a tough day. In fact, she nearly broke down, telling her husband-to-be, Jesse Jones, about her depression just as she opened the misdirected envelope. And the magic envelope wasn't finished with its surprises. Cassandra looked closer and saw that on the envelope were "Live long and prosper", a nod to the space-based film Star Trek (《星际迷航》).
Cassandra and Jesse had no idea who the anonymous note writer was. But they figured the Star Trek reference was because the person noticed the "fandom" corner of their invitation, which had both a Star Wars light-saber (光剑) and a Harry Potter wand (魔杖). "She assumed we'd understand her message,” Cassandra said. "Which we did."
The following night Cassandra and Jesse went out to dinner with a friend who was going overseas with the military. They happily put the $ 20 toward their bill. Then Cassandra stopped by a store and bought another card—a thank-you card. She wrote her aunt and uncle's incorrect address on the envelope again to "Kind Stranger". Inside, she wrote, "Thank you for the note and taking the time to send it. Not many people would have done that. It was a big blessing after the day I was having. I am thankful for people like you still being in the world."
Back in April 1939 and armed with $5,000 provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, Columbia University Teachers College professor Frank Cyr took a tour of ten states to make a research about school transportation problems. What he found was that many students had no dependable way to get to school and the ones who did often traveled in unsafe buses in the over 100,000 school areas.
Seeing a need to fix this problem, Cyr organized a meeting- one that would change the future of school buses forever. School officials and transportation experts met to set much-needed standards for buses, including those for color, height and width as well as safety rules that hadn't been set before or that were different in every state.
There were many different bus colors in the US before this meeting; several areas even planned to have red, white and blue buses as a way of encouraging students to love their country. Cyr presented his new choices to education officials, a reported "50 shades (色度) changing from lemon yellow to deep orange-red". The matter was settled quickly. Yellow, or "National School Bus Glossy Yellow", was chosen because it was quite striking, making the school bus easy to be seen. Besides, it made the bold (黑体的), black writing on the side of each bus clear. (The bold, black writing gives information about each school area, telling students which school bus they could take during early morning and late afternoon hours.) Thirty-five states made the changes quickly, and every state was on board by 1974.
Being recognized as the "father of the yellow school bus", Frank Cyr has surely influenced your life if you ever rode a school bus or saw that noticeable color pulling up to your stop on a dusky morning.
This year, German environmentalists collected 1.75 million signatures for a "save the bees" law requiring an immediate change toward organic farming. But to create healthy ecosystems worldwide, people in communities across the globe will need to take similar action based on sympathy for insects — and not only for bees and butterflies. The environmentalists presented immediate, science-based actions to slow down the insect decline.
"It takes specific law to preserve the amazing variety of insects in the world and we need to stop the destroying of natural habitats, limit road building in parks and reserves and produce food without the use of pesticides," said Basset, an entomologist, "Conserving insects is not the same as conserving big animals or rare frogs. You can't keep millions of insects in a zoo."
A recent article in Entomology Today suggests that successful programs to save insects have a clear and simple objective and a strategically chosen audience. By focusing on bees and butterflies and other beautiful, familiar insects, it is possible to enact the law to protect the habitat of lesser known, less attractive, but equally important species.
But there are still huge gaps in information about how different species of insects are doing, especially in the tropics. "It is next to useless to weigh insects collected in an area and say that insect communities are increasing or declining." Basset said. "We need much more specific information. That is expensive and difficult because of the effort that it takes just to identify the species, especially in the tropics. What we are doing now is to group insects by their main function, and then to determine how each group is doing in a specific area of the world."
I took down the violin I made in the past two months, and walked towards the farmland outside. The violin shined in the sunlight, and I admitted, unwillingly, that it looked good. But I knew it was a mockery of my failure to find beauty.
"What makes a violin beautiful?"
I first asked this question as a three-year-old child and now again as a teenager. When I listened to a violin for the first time, I was so astonished by its beauty that I imagined a fairy living in the wooden frame. But fairies faded when I grew older. I wanted a reasonable answer to the question.
I referred to Professor Ruan, my violin teacher, who introduced the violin to me 14 years ago. This 85-year-old man rhapsodized about the legend of Antonio Stradivari, "His violins are the most beautiful works human has ever crafted." "Make a violin with your own hands, "Professor Ruan suggested, "when you play it, you'll know."
However, when Professor Ruan introduced to me a violin workshop, what I saw was far from my expectation. In front of me was a fat worker, shirtless and sunburned, soon to become my master. What shocked me most was that the "master" knew nearly nothing about music. His rough hands had been tending crops, not instruments, for most of his life.
Two months later, standing outside the workshop, I was disappointed. Yes, I just finished or copied a Stradivarius violin. But I didn't find beauty in it. Then I remembered Professor Ruan's words, "When you play it, you'll know." So I closed my eyes, and focused on where my fingers and strings touched, music flowed suddenly so beautifully that for a moment I doubted my own ears. Slowly I opened my eyes, and with surprise found the fairy of my childhood fantasy dancing to my music—the two-year-old daughter of the master.
Professor Ruan was right. I didn't find beauty until I played music with the violin, because beauty isn't in the instrument itself. It's just here, deep down, in ourselves.
If you remain with low selfconfidence, you can expect your life to continue as it is. Nothing will change. You will think poorly of yourself and, following your lead, others will too.
There are many disadvantages related with low selfconfidence. Having a sour mood and misunderstanding what other people say and do will lead to unrepairable relationships. You'll expect people to say no to you because you're unworthy. Others will distance themselves from you and you'll spend most of your time alone.
You'll get angry easily and avoid social situations in order to protect yourself. When people want to be close to you, you'll fail to behave naturally and build a healthy relationship. When relationships don't work out well, you believe there is something entirely wrong with you, and this makes your selfconfidence decrease even further.
When you have low selfconfidence, you find it difficult to identify(辨别)and achieve goals in your life. You don't realize your life's purpose. There's no reason to try to devote to others since you have little value yourself. You feel there's nothing important that you have to give. Instead, you protect yourself from what you consider to be a dangerous world.
Sooner or later, your low selfconfidence and emotional anxiety you're experiencing will lead to a breakdown of your physical body. When you're sad, depressed, and angry, your cells(细胞)age and die more quickly. You may even put yourself into drugs, alcohol(酒精)or other harmful things. Because you don't feel you're worthy, you don't take care of yourself by eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep and the medical attention you need.
Not a pretty picture. This isn't what you want for your life. But there is good news! You don't have to live like that. You can create a better life for yourself, knowing your value, achieving your goals, and being happy and excited about life. By learning how to be selfconfident, you're telling yourself that it's time for a change. That's exactly what you need to be doing right now.
As an educator and health care provider, I have worked with numerous children infected with the virus that causes AIDS. The relationships that I have had with these special kids have been gifts in my life. They have taught me so many things, but I have especially learned that great courage can be found in the smallest of packages. Let me tell you about Tyler.
Tyler was born infected with HIV: his mother was also infected. From the very beginning of his life, he was dependent on medications to enable him to survive. When he was five, he had a tube inserted (插入) in a vein in his chest. This tube was connected to a pump, which he carried in a small backpack on his back. Medications were linked to this pump and were continuously supplied through this tube to his bloodstream. At times, he also needed supplemented (补充的) oxygen to support his breathing.
Tyler wasn't willing to give up one single moment of his childhood to this deadly disease. It was not unusual to find him playing and racing around his backyard, wearing his medicine-laden backpack and dragging his tank of oxygen behind him in his little wagon. All of us who knew Tyler were amazed at his pure joy in being alive and the energy it gave him. Tyler's mom often teased him by telling him that he moved so fast that she needed to dress him in red. That way, when she peered through the window to check on him playing in the yard, she could quickly spot him.
This dreaded disease eventually wore down even the likes of a little dynamo like Tyler. He grew quite ill and, unfortunately, so did his HIV-infected mother. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to survive, Tyler's mom talked to him about death. She comforted him by telling Tyler that she was dying too, and that she would be with him soon in heaven.
A few days before his death, Tyler called me over to his hospital bed and whispered, "I might die soon. I'm not scared. When I die, please dress me in red. Mom promised she's coming to heaven, too. I'll be playing when she gets there, and I want to make sure she can find me."
While Jennifer was at home taking an online exam for her business law class, a monitor (监控器) a few hundred miles away was watching her every move.
Using a web camera equipped in Jennifer's Los Angeles apartment, the monitor in Phoenix tracked how frequently her eyes moved from the computer screen and listened for the secret sounds of a possible helper in the room. Her Internet access was locked—remotely—to prevent Internet searches, and her typing style was analyzed to make sure she was who she said she was: Did she enter her student number at the same speed as she had in the past? Or was she slowing down?
In the battle against cheating, this is the cutting edge and a key to encourage honesty in the booming field of online education. The technology gives trust to the entire system, to the institution and to online education in general. Only with solid measures against cheating, experts say, can Internet universities show that their exams and diplomas are valid—that students haven't just searched the Internet to get the right answers.
Although online classes have existed for more than a decade, the concern over cheating has become sharper in the last year with the growth of "open online courses." Private colleges, public universities and corporations are jumping into the online education field, spending millions of dollars to attract potential students, while also taking steps to help guarantee honesty at a distance.
Aside from the web cameras, a number of other high-tech methods are becoming increasingly popular. Among them are programs that check students' identities using personal information, such as the telephone numbers they once used.
Other programs can produce unique exams by drawing on a large list of questions and can recognize possible cheaters by analyzing whether difficult test questions are answered at the same speed as easy ones. As in many university classes, term papers are scanned against some large Internet data banks for cheating.
Stories are shared in many ways. They are described in books and magazines. They are read around the campfire at night. They are randomly distributed from stand-alone booths. But what else?
To revive(复兴)literature in the era of fast news and smartphone addiction, Short Edition, a French publisher of short-form literature, has set up more than 30 story dispensers (分发机)in the USA in the past years to deliver fiction at the push of a button at restaurants, universities and government offices.
Francis Ford Coppola, the film director and winemaker, liked the idea so much that he invested in the company and placed a dispenser at his Cafe Zoetrope in San Francisco. Last month public libraries in some other cities announced they would be setting them up, too. There is one on the campus at Penn State. A few can be found in downtown West Palm Beach, Fla. And Short Edition plans to announce more, including at the Los Angeles International Airport.
"Everything old is new again," said Andrew Nurkin, the director of the Free Library of Philadelphia, which is one of the libraries that set up the dispensers. "We want people to be easily exposed to literature. We want to advance literacy among children and inspire their creativity. "
Here's how a dispenser works: It has three buttons on top indicating choices for stories that can be read in one minute, three minutes or five minutes. When a button is pushed, a short story is printed. The stories are free. They are chosen from a computer category of more than 100, 000 original submissions by writers whose works have been evaluated by Short Edition's judges, and transmitted over a mobile network. Offerings can be tailored to specific interests, like children's fiction or romance. Short Edition gets stories for its category by holding writing contests.
Short Edition set up its first booth in 2016 and has 150 machines worldwide. "The idea is to make people happy," said Kristan Leroy, director of Short Edition. "There is too much unhappiness today. "
I would always remember that day. When I was 14, all I wanted was a unique necklace with my name carved. It was the "in " thing and it seemed every girl except me had one. On my 15th birthday, my Mum gave me a beautiful necklace with my initials(姓名首字母) carved into it. I was in heaven.
What made it even more special was that it was about the only thing that wasn't being "replaced". We'd been burnt out in fires that swept through our area earlier that year and had lost everything—so most of the "new" stuff(东西) we got was really just to replace what we'd lost. But not my necklace. My necklace was new.
Then, only one month later, I lost it. I took it off before bed and it was missing in the morning. I was sad and searched everywhere for it. But it seemed to have disappeared. Eventually, I gave up and stopped looking for it. And two years later, we sold the house and moved away.
Years passed, and a couple of moves later, I was visiting my parents' when Mum told me that she had something for me. It wasn't my birthday, nor was it Easter or Christmas or any other giftgiving occasion. Mum noticed my questioning look. "You'll recognize this one, "she said, smiling.
Then she handed me a small box. I took it from her and opened it to find my beautiful necklace inside.
The family who had bought our house 13 years earlier had recently decided to do some redecorations, which included replacing the carpets. When they pulled the carpet up in my old bedroom, they found the necklace. As it had my initials carved into it, they realized who owned the necklace. They'd had it professionally cleaned up by a jeweler before sending it to my mother. And it still fits me.
Too many people want others to be their friends, but they don't give friendship back. That is why some friendships don't last very long. To have a friend, you must learn to be one. You must learn to treat your friend the way you want your friend to treat you. Learning to be a good friend means learning three rules: be honest; be generous; be understanding.
Honesty is where a good friendship starts. Friends must be able to trust one another. If you don't tell the truth, people usually find out. If a friend finds out that you haven't been honest you may lose your friend's trust. Good friends always expect one another to speak and act honestly.
Generosity means sharing and makes a friendship grow. You don't have to give your lunch money or your clothes. Instead, you have to learn how to share your ideas and feelings. These can be very valuable to friends. They tell your friends what is important to you. By sharing them, you help your friends know you better.
Sooner or later everyone needs understanding and help with problems. Something may go wrong at school. Talking about the problem can make it easier to solve. Turning to a friend for help can be a first step in solving the problem. So to be a friend you must listen and understand. You must try to put yourself in your friend's place so you can understand the problem better.
No two friendships are completely alike. But all true friendships have three things in common. If you plan to keep your friends, you must practice honesty, generosity and understanding.
Once upon a time, a daughter complained to her father that her life was unhappy and that she was tired of struggling all the time.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes, eggs and coffee beans in them. After 20 minutes, he took them out, putting the potatoes and eggs in a bowl and the coffee in a cup.
Turning to his daughter, he said, "Look closer, and touch the potatoes." She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked her to taste the coffee. Its good smell brought a smile to her face.
"Father, what does this mean?" she asked. He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and the coffee beans were in the same adversity(逆境)—the boiling water. However, each one reacted differently.
The strong and hard potato became soft and weak in boiling water. The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard. However, the coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new. "Which one do you want to be like," he asked. "When adversity knocks on your door, how will you respond?"
In life, challenges happen to us all, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.
