Shrek’s Adventure

Shrek’s Adventure! is a one-of-a-kind indoor “walk-and-ride” tourist attraction in London inspired by the hit Dream Works films Shrek, Shrek 2, and Shrek the Third. It allows children to come face to face with Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, and many others.

Shrek’s Adventure! has ten funny shows featuring classic sets (like Shrek’s swamp) from many Shrek films, a breathtaking 4D ride with special effects， and most importantly, a tour where kids can help break the code and save Shrek so he gets back to his beloved swamp (沼泽 地) safely.

Activities

 Going aboard the magical 4D Dream Works Tours bus(with Donkey acting as the tour guide)

 Learning how to be a Viking of Berk

 Cooking up a magic spell at the Muffin Man’s house

Basic Rules

 All children under the age of 15 must be accompanied by an adult at all times.

 All bags and coats must be brought with you during the tour.

 All visitors must arrive within the time on your booking confirmation and you must bring a printed version of the booking with you during your visit. If you do not arrive within your reserved arrival time, you may have to wait until the next available show time.

Ticket Costs

 £27(at the door) or £18. 90(online) for people aged 16 and over

 £21. 85 (at the door) or £15. 30(online) for children aged 3 to 15

 Children under the age of three can get in for free.

For Lydia Koniordou, a famous Greek actress and former Greek minister of culture and sports, cultural preservation is essential to help people know who they are and learn what they should do in the future.

“The taller you want to grow, the deeper your roots must be. Our cultural past is our roots. If we don’t have really strong roots and depth in our perception (认识) of our identity, we cannot grow. Without these roots, we will be torn out very easily with the currents,” she told the journalist in a recent interview, adding cultural heritage is in fact very much alive and relevant today.

Speaking of her teaching experience overseas, Koniordou said she was very much impressed by her Chinese students when she gave seminars on ancient Greek tragedy at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2014-15. When the students worked on Alcestis, an Athenian tragedy by ancient Greek playwright Euripides, they thoroughly researched the costumes they would be wearing, the set, and the lights, among others, she recalled. “I feel they evolved and were transformed by this experience as I was transformed. They did not just play a role, but created a whole world and that is why the production had so much interest also for the spectators,” she said.

Koniordou participated in the production of Euripides ‘Electra’ together with Greek director Kostas Tsianos. “Tsianos did something very important for Greek culture. He connected folk forms of art, folk dances, songs and poetry with our classical past. We presented this performance in many places around the world, and the feeling that it stirred in the audience was quite similar, even though they didn’t always understand the language,” she said.

The Chinese civilization is a huge tree with very deep roots, and Greece also has a rich ancient civilization, she said, adding she believes that the two countries could promote cooperation and exchanges in many fields, such as in preservation of antiques.

For more than 25 years, search engines have been the Internet’s front door. AltaVista, the first site to allow searches of the full text of the web, was swiftly replaced by Google, which has dominated the field ever since. Google’s search engine, still the heart of its business, has made its parent, Alphabet, one of the world’s most valuable companies.

But nothing lasts forever, particularly in technology. Just ask IBM, which once ruled business computing, or Nokia, once the leader in mobile phones. Both were defeated because they missed big technological transitions (革新). Now tech firms are excited about an innovation that might bring a similar shift and a similar opportunity. Chatbots (聊天机器人) powered by artificial intelligence (AI) let users gather information via typed conversations. Leading the field is ChatGPT, made by OpenAI, a startup. By the end of January, two months after its launch, ChatGPT was being used by more than 100m people, making it the fastest- growing consumer application in history, according to UBS, a bank.

AI is already used behind the scenes in many products, but ChatGPT has put it center stage, by letting people chat with an Al directly. ChatGPT can write essays in various styles, explain complex concepts, summarize text and answer various questions. It can even pass legal and medical exams. And it can synthesise knowledge from the web: for example, listing holiday spots that match certain criteria, or suggesting menus. If asked, it can explain its reasoning and provide detail. Many things that people use search engines for today, in short, can be done better with chatbots.

On February 7th, Microsoft, which has invested more than $11bn in OpenAI, revealed a new version of Bing, its search engine, which includes ChatGPT. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’ s boss, sees this as his chance to challenge Google. For its part, Google has announced Bard, its own chatbot, as a companion to its search engine. The share price of Baidu, known as the Google of China, jumped when it said it would release its chatbot, called Ernie, in March.

But can chatbots be trusted? Can tech firms make money from this? Only time will tell.

Have you ever wished you could be better organized or more sociable? Or more inventive and original? Perhaps you’re a constant worrier, and you’d prefer to be a little more carefree? If any of these thoughts ring true, you are not alone. Many surveys show that at least two-thirds of people would like to change their personality. In the past, such desires appeared to be impossible. Our personalities were thought to be formed in childhood and to remain fixed throughout lives. Recent research, however, suggests that with the right psychological strategies and enough effort, people can successfully mould (塑造) their core traits into the shape they desire. That is what psychology professor Nathan Hudson and his colleagues have shown with studies.

The research has centered on fivetraits (特点) that are thought to contain our most fundamental characteristics. Known as the “big five”, they are: extraversion-how outgoing and sociable you are; conscientiousness-how organized and disciplined you are; agreeableness- how concerned you are with social harmony; neuroticism-how nervous and sensitive you are; and openness to experience-how imaginative and curious you are. People’s scores for the big five can predict important outcomes. People who score highly on conscientiousness, for example, get better grades at school and earn more. Those who score highly on neuroticism, meanwhile, are more sensitive to stress.

In the study, someone who wished to be more conscientious might be asked to carefully read an email before sending it, or to write a to-do list before going to bed. A neurotic person might be given exercises to improve emotional regulation, such as writing down feelings when they are hard to control. The aim is for the thinking patterns and behaviours they make to become habitual. And the evidence so far suggests it works well. Similar results could be seen in a later experiment, which used a smartphone app to coach participants in their desired big five traits.

As Aristotle argued more than 2, 300 years ago, we become what we repeatedly do.