1 . Escape to a New Life— Everyone’s Dream?

A TV series in Wales has become a heated issue by becoming the number one choice for teenagers to watch.

The main character is a young farmer and the series is about country life, making the popularity of the series all the more surprising. The series is calm and relaxing and really the opposite to city life. Escape to a New Life describes the Welsh countryside as a beautiful and peaceful place and its people as very caring and happy.

The series director believes that this is what young people want today. She says the success of the series is because teenagers want a happier and healthier life away from the pressures of deadlines and exams. She figures this series offers a form of escape from their fast and stressful lives.

Despite this, many parents and teachers are worried about the effect this is having on young people. Parents report that their children are just watching this series and neglecting everything else, using Escape to a New Life as an excuse for not completing homework, or refusing to revise for exams, citing a need for a happier and less stressful life.

One father, Paul McGregor, said his daughter Charlotte had changed a lot. He said, “She used to be in the school athletics team and loved the javelin, but now she only wants to watch the TV series and has been dropped from the team. She no longer completes her homework saying it doesn’t matter as she just wants to ‘escape to a new life’”.

Paediatrician, Dr. Elisa Carhart who specialises in child mental health, says that TV can influence young people’s decisions in life, but believes that if a young person reacts as strongly as Charlotte, it’s likely there are other reasons for the change in her behaviour.

2 . On paper, Joyxee Island sounds like an attractive vacation accommodation. Located in Isla Mujeres Bay, a short distance from the Mexican Caribbean hot spot of Cancun, this private island features swimming ponds, Internet access, a fully functioning bathroom, a rainwater collection system, private beach space, solar power, a three-story home and a total area of 750 square meters.

The island, owned by British artist Richart Sowa, isn’t an island at all, at least not in the typical sense. Joyxee is floating (漂浮) on a man-made base of about 150,000 air-filled bottles held inside large nets. This floating bottom layer is covered with sand and soil. The roots from the island’s mangrove (红树林植物) forest have grown through these nets, providing natural structural strength. Creating this island has been a long process. Joyxee began as a small raft, but has grown into a space that’s large enough to allow Sowa to live a mostly self-sufficient lifestyle.

Joyxee is not Sowa’s first try at a plastic-bottle island. Sowa built Spiral Island on Mexico’s Caribbean coast in the late 1990s. Spiral did not survive Hurricane Emily, though, which struck the Caribbean in 2005. Fortunately, some of the bottle-filled nets were preserved. Sowa used these re-recycled bottles to start Joyxee with the help of local environmentalists who wanted to support his eco-island idea. He decided to place it inside a lagoon (濒海湖) in Isla Mujeres Bay to protect Joyxee from suffering the same misfortune as Spiral Island.

While the media have covered the island as a novelty, Sowa’s statements on his website show that he thinks that his island constructions could be the start of something bigger. “Environmentally, the island is an example of a wind-, solar- and wave-powered living space. Furthermore, the mangroves can clean the air by absorbing CO₂. And because such islands are floating, they would not be affected by rising sea levels, flooding or other disasters.” Sowa welcomes guests to Joyxee and also offers tours. For tours, including a return trip to the shore, he requests a “donation of S5 or more.”

4 . I recently had a conversation with a friend who was feeling very upset about work. Why? He thought his manager didn’t like him. He rarely heard much from his manager, and when his manager said something, it was about correcting some aspects of his work or giving him some constructive advice.

Not surprisingly, given my friend’s understandably anxious view of these workplace dynamics (动态), he was afraid of his annual performance evaluation. He was worried that his boss might even tell him that he wasn’t needed anymore. Accordingly, he considered looking around for another job — not because he really wanted to, as he liked the kind of work he was doing, but because he suffered from the kind of management.

The evaluation day came, and to his great surprise, rather than being harshly critical, his manager told him that he was doing a fine job and gave him a promotion.

The sad truth is, this kind of phenomenon is by no means unusual in the workplace. One recent survey showed that nearly half of the employees have considered leaving a job “due to lack of recognition”. Another similar study found 46 percent of the employees left a job “because they felt unappreciated”.

The good news is that, in this case, the damage was repaired before it was too late — before my friend was out the door and his company began the expensive and time-consuming process of hiring a new employee. But as the research noted above shows, workplace problems related to recognition and appreciation are as common as the office air we breathe.

This conforms with my personal experience; during my decades of corporate management, I saw similar appreciation issues all the time. When a job isn’t done well, nobody deserves anything, of course. But when a job is done well, if you’re an employee, it’s entirely natural to expect at least a bit of appreciation. So if you’re a manager, it’s a good idea to show some. It’s that simple.

5 . “It’s too sugary, I can’t manage very many,” said a friend. She wasn’t talking about dessert but about some fresh cherries. I bit into another cherry and realized she was right. The fruit was so sweet that it was as if it had been pre-sugared.

But the cherries of my childhood were much less sweet than today’s cherries. Some of them were hardly sweet at all, which made it all the more exciting when you happened upon a super sweet one.

Is modern fruit getting sweeter? The answer is yes. Some of the most powerful evidence comes from zoos. In 2018, Melbourne Zoo in Australia had stopped giving fruit to most of its animals because cultivated fruit was now so sweet that it was causing tooth decay and weight gain.

Breeding isn’t the only reason that modern fruit is sweeter; there’s also climate change. It’s found that since the 1970s, with rising temperatures, Fuji apples have become significantly sweeter and softer.

But the sweetness of modern fruit is not without its problems, especially for people with diabetes, who have to be careful to moderate their intake of higher - sugar fruits such as pineapple. Fruit that is bred sweeter also tends to be lower in the phytochemicals (植物化学成分) that make it so healthy.

Health aside, maybe the real problem with modern fruit is that it has become yet another sweet thing in a world filled with sugar. Even grapefruit, which used to be quite bitter, is sometimes now as sweet as oranges. If you’ve never tasted a sour cherry, how can you fully appreciate a sweet one? Experts put forwards some thoughts about how to appreciate the various tastes of modern fruit.

9 . “In the past, there’d be ringing of the church bells during a national emergency. They should be ringing now.” says Hamish McKenzie－a bell-ringer, boat-builder, extreme recycler and climate change activist. “Climate change is the greatest danger we face. In 100 years’ time, maybe less, it will be unlikely for people to live there because of rising water levels and the likelihood of hurricanes.” he tells Amanda Jones, the reporter from New York Times, gesturing over to the bank just feet from his boat.

Hamish McKenzie lives with his wife on his floating houseboat in Shorehame-on-Sea. Now 63, he’s turned recycling into an art and has created lots of houseboats out of old vehicles and things from junkyards and farms. He and his wife live on Verda－a mixture of and old coach and a 1928 Portsmouth-Gosport ship, which Hamish rescued from the muddy seabed. He lists another houseboat, named Dodge, on Airbnb to fund his lifestyle. His idea of walking lightly on the planet extends into every area of life. Apart from his laptop and piano, almost everything seems to have been recycled－from the microwave letterbox to tractor tire windows. “I buy my clothes from charity shops and regard meat as a treat. We’re living off vast amounts of seasonal local vegetables from small shops.”

“Sadly, there are no groceries left in Shoreham. They have been ruined by cars and out-of-town supermarkets. I hate the scenery of 30,000 cars at the end of my road. An average car weighs around 1.2 tons, but how much does a passenger weigh? Petrol engines are only 30% efficient.”

Hamish gets around by bicycle and often says, “Many people feel powerless about what is happening all over the world and even stop watching the news. But we have to think about what we can do for the community. Everyone can take action and do their bit.”