【推荐2】Many youths want to lean how to drive cars. This year one sixth of undergraduates in Beijing have registered at driving school. The students, mostly from majors such as business management or imitational trade, will finish their driving courses within 20 days or so.

Training costs have dropped to 4, 500 yuan for students, according to the Haidian Driving School in Beijing. The price is not really low, but students will accept it, seeing it as an investment (投资) in their future. Familiarity with the operation of computers and fluent English are the basic skills graduating students need to find a job. But a driver s permit has become another factor (因素).

“In the job market, owning a driver’s permit sometimes strengthens a graduating student’s competitiveness for a good position,” says Li Hua, an undergraduate at the China University of Political Science and law.

Cars will become a necessary part of many people’s lives in the coming years, and it is difficult to get a permit out of campus because of the pressures on working people’s time. “Having a full-time job after graduation offers limited time to learn to drive. We senior students have plenty of spare time, plenty of oppurtunity to learn,” says another undergraduate at the university.

Wu Dong, an official at the driving school, said undergraduates were very able and serious, and could grasp in an hour what ordinary people took four hours to learn. In this driving school, middle-aged people, young women and college students are the main customers.

From March 1, 2018, to get a driver’s permit, a beginner is now required to have at least 86 hours’ practice before the final road test.

【推荐3】Eric Attayi, owner of the Urban Bicycle Gallery in Houston, Texas, has watched the pandemic transform his shop in a way most businesses can only dream of.

Bicycles are selling before he has time to assemble them for display. Attayi said he'd matched his 2019 sales by the start of May. He's had to hire new employees to meet demand, and hasn't taken a day off since February. Attayi said now the phone doesn't stop ringing and his guys get overwhelmed. He'd given raises and started buying lunch for his stressed staff.

As unemployment reaches record levels and small businesses scramble to survive, bike shops have been an exception.

They're thriving whether they're in car-dominated cities like Houston or more traditional biking areas like New York. Keeping enough bikes in stock, and finishing repairs in a timely manner, has become a challenge. Customers are being turned away, in some cases.

New customers are looking for ways to be active and outdoors. Bike shop owners say that the closing of gyms and yoga studios during the pandemic has contributed. Others say customers are looking for a commuting alternative to public transportation. Social spacing is easiest on individual modes of transportation, like cars and bikes. In March 2020, US cycling sales increased 39% when compared with March 2019, according to a survey.

"Bikes are like the new toilet paper," Attayi said. "If it's available, buy it."

Robert Keating, owner of the Triathlon Lab outside Los Angeles, said he's never seen anything like the current bicycle boom in the 37 years he's worked in bike shops. He's shifted his shop from a focus on high-end bicycles to affordable bikes people are likely to ride in their neighborhood. Beach cruisers have been especially popular, he said.

Bike shop owners are also wondering how long the current boom will last. Some said customers were more interested in biking because with less car traffic, roads felt safer. Their interest may decrease as traffic returns. But some cities have begun to reallocate street space to bike lanes, which could lead to more biking in the long term.

Phil Koopman, owner of BicycleSpace in Washington DC, compared the current bicycle boom to 1999, when many people bought computers to prepare for Y2K.

"Then those companies didn't sell a lot of computers for a few years because everyone already had one," Koopman said. "That's the big question. Is this a one-time thing or is it something sustainable?"

【推荐2】Differences in time zones complicate international phone calls. But even more important are different concepts of time and approaches to time in different cultures.

People from the USA as well as other North Americans believe “Time is money”. This value of time is rooted in their ancestors. Early in the 17th century, their ancestors arrived on the Atlantic coast, a new, undeveloped land. To survive in the tough environment, they had to struggle day and night. Time meant so much to them that they had not even one second to waste. After decades of struggle, they developed the value of efficient use of time and passed it down. Thus far, the Americans are still eager to finish things quickly and are impatient with too reflective (深思熟虑的) people.

In some countries, the American work style of speeding everything up has no significance. In the Arab East, the more important you are, the faster service you get. Close relatives take absolute priority; non-relatives are kept waiting. In the Middle East, a deadline, which is often established to show the degree of urgency or importance of work, will do nothing but stop the Middle Easterners from working, because they consider it rude and overly demanding.

Another aspect reflecting different concepts of time is the classification of monochronic time (单向记时制) and polychronic time (多向记时制）by Edward T. Hall. People from monochronic cultures, such as the Germans, the Austrians, the Swiss and the Americans, do only one important thing at a time. In polychronic cultures, people such as Arabs, Asians and Latin Americans take an entirely opposite approach. They do several things at once. Time commitments, such as deadlines, schedules, are taken rather casually and changed often and easily.

Miscommunication will arise when people from the two cultures contact. Charlies Hawkins, a U.S. teacher, told me that many a time his appointments with Indians were interrupted, not only by private phone calls, but also by long conversations with other people and even the neighbor’s children, which displeased and even annoyed him.

【推荐3】Competition in the Olympics should be between athletes who use their own strength or speed. If some athletes don’t follow the rules, it ruins the fun for everyone connected with the game. It also gives an extremely unfair advantage to the athlete using the drug.

———Jim from Atlanta

Drug use among top athletes has long been a problem. Without drug testing, the Olympics would be about who uses the most drugs, not who trains the hardest and has the most athletic skills. Also drugs hurt people and they could even kill people.

———David from Houston

Why should athletes be allowed to compete when it’s not really them who are actually competing? It’s the drugs that do all the work. Athletes who use drugs are like runners with skates. It’s cheating and irresponsible, which must be strictly forbidden. It’s unfair to other competitors who don’t use drugs.

———Bruce from Chicago

Most sports athletes are held to a standard of being drug free. Olympians should not be held any differently. They take part in highly competitive sports for their country and win medals for it. Testing the athletes for drugs must be done in every country and every sport. No drug testing would be unfair to people who don’t use drugs.

———Sam from Los Angeles

Although popular opinion is against athletes’ using drugs, I believe they do help make the Olympic sports more wonderful. I enjoy seeing human beings achieving things that couldn’t be done with normal conditioning. I enjoy seeing stronger, faster and longer performances by make good use of drugs.

———Jack from New York

【推荐3】He runs from explosions, drives over waterfalls and jumps from tall buildings. That might sound like Superman, but stuntman(特技演员) Vince Deadrick Jr. is very much human.

As a stuntman in movies and television shows, Deadrick admits he’s no stranger to getting hurt. He has suffered broken bones, bled, gotten knocked out and nearly fallen to death, but he considers himself lucky to be alive after some of the stunts he has performed.

Deadrick has been a stunt coordinator(协调员) for the Nickelodeon channel for 12 years. He has worked with famous actors, directors and producers, and he has travelled all over the world. But that doesn’t mean his work is easy.

It took him years of hard work to get where he is today. Deadrick’s father, Vince Deadrick Sr., was also a stuntman, but his family connection didn’t give Deadrick a free pass into the movie business. He learned from his dad how to set up cardboard boxes and fall mats for high falls, and he started training on his own once he decided to follow in his father's footsteps.

As a stunt coordinator, Deadrick takes danger seriously. When he hires a new stunt performer, he looks for a professional(专业人士).

“You’re only as good as the people you hire,” he says. A stuntman needs to know his own abilities and limitations so he won’t shy away from doing his best but also won’t be such a daredevil(铤而走险的人) that he could hurt himself or others.

When the actors and stuntmen are going to do something dangerous, they need to know they’re trusting the right person. With over 40 years in the business, Deadrick is an expert at making stunts both realistic and safe.

Though he has a large amount of responsibility, Deadrick loves his job.

“I’m in a position where I have to make decisions on risk factors, keeping the actors and stuntmen safe while still making it look impressive. I love my business, and I love the excitement.”