Last summer, I spent four months working in France, where the company I was working for put me up in a house that didn’t have Wi - Fi. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

I soon discovered, however, that living in a house without Wi - Fi was easier than I expected.

Contact between my friends and family was significantly reduced to the odd text message here and there. I couldn’t enjoy my usual web browsing on BBC iPlayer, social media sites, keeping up to date with the news, or even wanting to know the opening hours of shops in the new area I was in.

I didn’t, however, spend a full four months without connecting to a Wi - Fi network. It was only a five minute walk to the reception where I could connect for free and spend as much time online as I wanted to at my own leisure. It made me think, though, how unnecessary it can be, how unnecessarily we rely on it - how we perhaps rely on it too much. As a person, I was more sociable. I spent more time with my housemates instead of hiding behind a computer screen. I did other things that I wouldn’t necessarily have done if I could have browsed the web at my leisure. I read more, I cooked meals for my friends, and I even tidied up more often. Dare I say it; I learned how to live without Wi - Fi. Dare I say it; I found it was easier than I had imagined.

The grocery store might not be your favorite place to visit when you're at home, but is it ever fun when you're in another country? Honestly speaking, they're one of those strange little destinations that I like to sniff out everywhere I go, much as other travelers head toward clothing stores, libraries, coffee shops or galleries.

The greatest beauty of the grocery store –– whether it's a supermarket or a tiny shop –– is that it gives you a glimpse into what local people buy to cook their own meals. This offers clues into their lifestyles and preferences, and into the agricultural and cooking practices of the country. I stare at the strange fruits and vegetables, the seafood, the cheese, the spices, the bread, and oh, the chocolate...always the chocolate!

Being the environmental nerd（呆子）I am, I like paying attention to packaging, which can reflect people's attitudes towards environmental protection. Italy, for example, has a habit of requiring customers to bag their fruits and vegetables in plastic for weighing, while Sri Lanka leaves everything loose in bins. In Brazil, everything is prepackaged in a layer of plastic.

People in grocery stores tend to be friendlier. They smile, say hello, and sometimes ask questions, which can lead to great conversations. I had a further discussion with a teenaged cashier in Sri Lanka, over which bag of crunchy（松脆的）mix to buy. He insisted that the one labeled “spicy” would be too hot for me, but I told him I was willing to risk it. He laughed and we ended up talking about my favorite Sri Lankan foods for ten minutes.

It's interesting then to come home and look at one's own local grocery store through new eyes. What would a visitor think? What stands out, and what do the food displays say about us as a culture? You might be surprised by what you realize.

A．	B．
C．	D．

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder. This increase in complexity, often called "feature creep," costs consumers time, but it also costs business money. Product returns in the U.S. cost a hundred billion dollars a year, and a recent study by Elke den Ouden, of Philips Electronics, found that at least half of returned products have nothing wrong with them. Consumers just couldn't figure out how to use them. Companies now know a great deal about problems of usability and consumer behavior, so why is it that feature creep proves unstoppable?

In part, fieature creep is the product of the so-called internal-audience problem: the people who design and sell product are not the ones who buy and use them, and what engineers and marketers think is important is not necessarily what's best for consumers. The engineers tend not to notice when more options make a product less usable. And marketing and sales departments see each additional feature as a new selling point, and a new way to attract customers.

You might think, then, that companies could avoid fieature creep by just paying attention to what customers really want. But that's where the trouble begins, because although consumers find overloaded gadgets（ 配件）unmanageable, they also find them attractive. It turns out that when we look at a new product in a store we tend to think that the more features there are, the better. It is only once we get the product home and try to use it that we realize the virtues of simplicity.

It seems strange that we don't expect feature tiredness and thus avoid it. But, as numerous studies have shown, people are not, in general, good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. As a result, we will pay more for more features because we systematically overestimate how often we'll use them. We also overestimate our ability to figure out how a complicated product works.

The fact that buyers want bells and whistles but users want something clear and simple creates an unusual problem for companies. A product that doesn't have enough features may fail to catch our eye in the store. But a product with too many features is likely to annoy consumers.

Weeks ago, I was traveling by train. After several stations, the delivery man from the cafeteria came along to_______ the pre-booked hot meals and drinks. Just behind him rushed in a 9-year-old girl, who put out her hand, _______some food. The food supplier was_______and pushed her out of the coach（旅客车厢）. Something in me made me_______. I stepped outside and saw the child still standing there and crying. I asked her if she was hungry and she_______. So I grabbed her hand and said I’d buy her food.

When I took her to the coach with the cafeteria, the people standing there had a(an)_______expression on their face, seeing the little girl with me. _______their reaction, I asked her to_______whatever she wanted. As I pointed to each item, she_______nodding.

________, we collected so much food. When I turned to the cashier to pay the bill, the little girl________hurrying down the train. The cashier shook his head in disbelief and said the girl must be laughing for having fooled me into________her unhappiness.

As I returned to my coach, the cashier’s________made me doubt whether she’d really fooled me. So I__________and went down the train, following the ________the little girl had taken. After several coaches, I walked to a relatively-deserted coach. Here I saw a________which left me surprised. This little girl was sitting in a ________with two other miserable-looking young boys. She had put all the food in the center and was________ putting food into the hand of a young blind boy. Seeing all this, I couldn’t help________. The little girl taught us that one can be________even when poor.

Do you know why autumn has two names? Actually, "autumn" appeared first in English in the 1300s, coming from the Latin word "autumnus". "Autumn" caught on quickly, likely because it replaced the     41     (origin) name – "harvest". As you might imagine, when crops were collected from the fields, calling the season "harvest" might make people     42     (confuse) because "harvest" is also the name for the act     43     (it).

So "autumn" appeared instead of "harvest". Then the term, "autumn",     44     was referred to the season between summer and winter, lasted for a couple of     45     (century). "Fall" as a name for the season came about sometime in the 1500s, a shortened version of the very poetic phrase for "the fall of leaves". The English phrase had true meaning of the season without leading     46     any confusion. Not even a century later, the phrase became a simple word: fall.

Around this same time, the English language     47     (travel) across the globe as Britain expanded, and it was going through some changes, as many languages did. This was     48     (particular) true in the American colonies. Some English words changed in the US, whether in terms of spelling     49     in terms of general usage. In the mid-1800s, British and American English speakers further developed in different ways and "fall" was the common word for "autumn" in the US, while autumn     50     (regard) as the word for fall in England.

Since the eight grade I've been stuck between two different career: art and science. On the one hand, I adored art, which will always be a part of me. I want to make mine own living by running a cartoon magazine, in which I'd be a drawer and writer too. On other hand, I am totally for love with biology! I find it interesting how math seems to make so many sense and I like chemistry as well as. Up to now, I have not decided what to doing in the future. One of my friends suggests that I be a surgeon which is good at drawing cartoon. It sounds like a good idea.

Yours,

Li Hua