【推荐2】Your third year of high school is probably a tough and busy time.     1     We all know that not getting enough sleep is not good for our health, but it has been found that less sleep could even cause us to have fewer friends.

According to researchers from the University of California, people who don’t get enough sleep are less willing to socialize with others.     2    

The researchers carried out a small study. They tested 18 young people who had just had a good night’s sleep, and tested them again after a sleepless night.     3     When each person on the video got too “close”, the participants could choose to stop the video.

The results showed that the participants kept each person at a distance of 60 percent further back if they hadn’t gotten enough sleep.     4     But when the participants got a good night’s sleep, they allowed the person to get much closer to them.

According to lead researcher Matthew Walker, the less sleep you get, the less you want to socialize with others. In turn, other people may think you’re weird and stay away from you.     5    

So if you want to be a more sociable and popular person, sleeping well might help. “One night of good sleep makes you feel more outgoing and socially confident,” Walker said.

【推荐3】My mother is now 90. Thankfully, she is blessed with good health.

I still remember ten years ago when she turned 80, she surprised my brother and me with what she described as “independent birthday”.

One day she informed us she’d booked a seven-night trip to Turkey. Alone. Because she had never been. Of course, that was ridiculous. There was no way my brother and I could allow that. A weak, little old lady wandering the streets of Istanbul on her own, not speaking a word of Turkish, with no knowledge of the laws and customs of the land — it was out of the question!

She paid no attention to us. Off she went. When she returned, she told us it had been a wonderful success. As it turned out, she had barely spent any time alone, after hiring a taxi driver to show her around Istanbul for some days. He took her to all the sites — the markets, churches and restaurants. He introduced her to a blanket seller, “a lovely fellow,” and she bought some blankets. The seller took her address details and promised to ship them to Canada. They would be arriving in three or four weeks. My mother beamed (眉开眼笑) as she told this story. The blanket seller and my mother apparently built a friendship and she told him to drop by if he were ever in Canada.

To our great shock, her blankets did arrive some weeks later, along with a lovely note from the seller Mustafa. To our even greater surprise, the following year Mustafa himself arrived in Canada. He called our mother to inform her he was in Ottawa.

“I invited him over and he came by for a cup of tea. They drink a lot of tea in Turkey,” my mother told my horrified brother and me.

Her trip of independence seems to be thoughtfully based on a realization that life is to be lived. It reminded me of the line from the movie The Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy living or get busy dying.”