Canadian Music Festivals to Let Your Hair Down at

Osheaga-Quebec

This 3-day local favorite is one of Canada’s biggest festivals, having a line-up of indie, rap and pop moguls. The festival is divided into six main stages: Mountain, River, Tree, Green, Valley and Zone Piknic Electronik-each featuring a different type of music.

Ottawa Bluesfest-Ontario

This music festival will celebrate its 25th birthday with hundreds of world-class shows. Taking place in the LeBreton Flats along, the Ottawa River, the festival will run across five stages over 10 exciting days. The star-studded line-up is full of local and international talents. Household names include alt-J, Alexisonfire, Chvrches, Jessie Reyez, Kygo, Logic, Shakey Graves, and many, many, many more.

Montreal Jazz Festival-Quebec

Founded in 1979, this Jazz festival will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year by hosting more than 600 concerts across 20 stages. Held in the heart of downtown and kicking off at the end of June, this year’s line-up is a mix of artists from around the world. This festival attracts more than 2.5 million music fans during 10 days, and is world famous in the jazz community. Most shows are free but some can cost up to $40 per person.

Festival d’été-Quebec

Established in 1908, the Festival d’été is an all-out 11-day musical feast that takes place in downtown Quebec City annually. Its main stage is one of the biggest in North America and is found in the historic Plains of Abraham. There are also hundreds of smaller performances spread across a dozen venues in the city. The best part is tickets are super cheap!

Eating, probably one of the most-important parts of the day and probably one of things that change most when moving to another country. In Oaxaca, Mexico, adapting to eating patterns can take a while.

The first few months of living here I enjoyed eating Mexican food. I quickly learnt that big lunches and small dinners were the Mexican way and I kinda liked it. It made sense. As the months wore on I desired cooking and with it I desired the ingredients I knew and loved.

Oaxaca is known for its fantastic food and the food really is mind-blowing, but the problem for me was variety. I am from London, a city where you can eat food from a different country every day of the week, I was spoilt when it came to choice. I began to instruct friends and family who visited to bring Thai curry paste, sweet chili sauce, Indian curry sauces and gravy to make the perfect English Roast dinner.

For quite a while Oaxacan food lost its charm and the thought of cooking Mexican food was just too annoying. I would start to think about dinner at 5 just as my local market was shut and I would realize I had no ingredients and no means of getting any unless I took a long journey to the supermarket. It sounds like a strange thing to pet concerned about but I really think it was one of the biggest changes that I faced moving to Oaxaca.

However, just as I hit the two-year mark, things changed. I guess somehow I stopped fighting things and I began to adapt to the Oaxaca market food way of life. I shopped regularly for the freshest ingredients. I knew what was in season and I cooked accordingly. I started to realize just how super lucky I was to be able to eat fresh, locally sourced, seasonable food on my own doorstep. What started as culture shock turned into an improved way of living!

When Thomas Edison hit a wall with his inventions, he would nap in an armchair while holding a steel ball. As he started to fall asleep and his muscles relaxed, the ball would strike the floor, waking him with insights into his problems.

To see whether Edison was right, researchers recruited more than 100 easy sleepers. The team gave them a math test. The volunteers weren’t told that there was an easier way to get the right answers by following a hidden rule. Those who didn’t find the rule after 30 trials took a 20-minute break resting in a chair in a dark room with their eyes closed. Each held a plastic bottle in their right hand while the researchers recorded their brain activity. They were also told to report aloud what was in their minds if they let the bottle fall. Most of those who napped reported various visions: dancing numbers and different shapes, the Roman Colosseum, a hospital room with a horse. After the break, the participants went back to complete the math problems.

The researchers didn’t see any connection between the content of peopled visions and their performance on the task. But looking at brain activity, they found that those who napped and were awakened during the first stage of sleep were three times better at finding the hidden key to the problem than those who remained awake. The creative effect happened even for people who spent just 15 seconds in the first sleep stage. But the trick didn’t work for those who reached later stages of sleep.

Contrary to the Edison tale, the magic moment didn’t come immediately after waking in this study. People took on average 94 trials of the math test after the nap to have an insight. “It is not like you can take a power nap and wake up with a solution right away.” Oudiette says, a sleep researcher at the Paris Brain Institute. Her team has already planned an experiment to help people reach a creative zone by monitoring their brain waves in real time. “Edison was somewhat right,” she says, “and now we have a lot more to explore.”

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

This poem by W. B Yeats is rather a thought-provoking poem on Major Robert Gregory, who was the son of one of Yeats’s friends. Robert Gregory was killed in Italy during the First World War in 1918. The poem was written during the First World War （1914-1919） when many Irish men fought for the cause of Englishmen. The poem is taken from the collection The Wild Swans At Coole. During the first World War, Ireland was a part of “Great Britain”. It became a separate nation later inl922. Therefore, when Gregory died, he actually died for the “English”, not for the “Irish”.

The pilot sees his forthcoming death yet he does- not seem regretful or scared but rather accepts the fate he is going to encounter. He clearly states that it is not any obligation for the country nor the inspiring speeches of the leaders or the cheering of the crowds that encourage him to fight in the battlefield. It is simply the thrill of the battlefield or adventure that pushes him to take up the job of an airman. He does not hate or love his enemies or his allies（盟友）; his country will neither be benefited nor hurt by any outcome of the war. His past life seems a waste, while his future life promises to be the same and his death will balance out his life. He feels that only death in war can balance his life of dullness. This is reflected in the line, “A waste of breath the years behind/In balance with this life, this death.”

This poem is recited in first-person. The poet is recounting the thoughts that are going through the airman’s mind as his death approaches. This choice of active voice is important because it gives all insight into the thoughts of the airman fighting on the edge of death. It is the poet who is imagining these thoughts.

Practice Energy-Efficient Cooking

The eco-friendly kitchen begins with eating green, but it doesn’t end there.    16     A few simple adaptations to your cooking methods can be a major step to a greener kitchen overall.

Stop Preheating.

    17     Many newer ovens come to temperature so rapidly that they make preheating almost out of date. If you’re roasting or baking something that’s a little flexible when it comes to cooking time, you can put it in right away, then turn the oven off five or ten minutes early, and let dishes finish cooking in the remaining heat.

    18    

Making as best use of the oven as possible-cooking more than one thing at once, for instance, is also wise. For small dishes, using a toaster oven, or reheating in a microwave will also save energy; in fact, Energy Star estimates that you can reduce cooking energy by as much as 80 percent when using the microwave instead of the oven.

Use Stoves Efficiently

When cooking on the stove, using a properly sized pot for each of the stove burners also makes a difference; on an electric stove, for example, a 6-inch pot used on an 8-mch burner wastes more than 40 percent of the burner’s heat.    19    , and then use them whenever possible, including when you’re bringing boiled water up to temperature, which helps reducing cooking time and keeps beat where it belongs-in the pan.

Try a Pressure Cooker

Pressure cookers are another great way to save energy, reducing cooking time by up to 70 percent.

Eat Raw

Of course, the most energy-efficient cooking means leaving heat out altogether.    20     There’s a large culture growing around the idea of raw food-don’t be afraid to try something new!

Black box is a term used to call two separate pieces of     36     (equip), a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and a flight data recorder (FDR). Black box information storage devices are compulsory on all commercial and corporate flights.    37     (Locate) in the aircraft’s tail, they are more likely to survive a crash.

The idea to create a device to store flight data was born in Australia in     38     1950s by Dr. David Warren. When Dr. Warren was six years old, his father was killed in a plane crash while flying from Tasmania to Melbourne across the Bass Strait. This incident drove him     39     (develop) a unit that could record flight data and cockpit conversations to help investigators following a crash.

The team “black box” was first used by the British during World War Two and     40    (refer) to the secret development of radar and electronic navigational (航行的) aids in British aircraft. These secretive devices were housed in non-reflective black boxes. Today, aircraft black boxes are painted     41     a color called international orange that aerospace and engineering firms use to help distinguish     42     (item) from their surroundings.

    43     (Follow) the disappearance of Malaria Airlines Flight 370 in 2014, there have been calls to develop a system that sends real-time flight information to a system on the ground.     44     such a system had been in place when flight 370 went missing from the radar screens, investigators would have known     45     (precise) where to search.