7 . For nearly a decade now, Merebeth has been a self-employed pet transport specialist. Her pet transport job was born of the financial crisis（危机）in the late 2000s. The downturn hit the real estate（房地产）firm where she had worked for ten years as an office manager.The firm went broke and left her looking for a new job. One day,while driving near her home, she saw a dog wandering on the road, clearly lost. She took it home, and her sister in Denver agreed to take it. This was a loving home for sure, but 1,600 miles away. It didn’t take long for Merebeth to decide to drive the dog there herself. It was her first road trip to her new job.

Merebeth’s pet delivery service satisfies her wanderlust. It has taken her to every state in the US except Montana,Washington and Oregon, she says proudly. If she wants to visit a new place, she will simply find a pet with transport needs there. She travels in all weathers. She has driven through 55 mph winds in Wyoming , heavy flooding and storms in Alabama and total whiteout conditions in Kansas.

This wanderlust is inherited from her father, she says.He moved their family from Canada to California when she was one year old, because he wanted them to explore a new place together.   As soon as she graduated from high school, she left home to live on Catalina Island off the Californian coast, away from her parents,where she enjoyed a life of sailing and off-road biking.

It turns out that pet transporting pays quite well at about $30,000 per year before tax. She doesn’t work in summer, as it would be unpleasantly hot for the animals in the car, even with air conditioning. As autumn comes, she gets restless the same old wanderlust returning. It’s a call she must handle alone, though.Merebeth says, “When I'm on the road, I’m just in my own world. I’ve always been independent-spirited and I just feel strongly that I must help animals.”

9 . Returning to a book you’ve read many times can feel like drinks with an old friend. There’s a welcome familiarity - but also sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changed you both, and thus the relationship. But books don’t change, people do. And that’s what makes the act of rereading so rich and transformative.

The beauty of rereading lies in the idea that our bond with the work is based on our present mental register. It’s true, the older I get, the more I feel time has wings. But with reading, it’s all about the present. It’s about the now and what one contributes to the now, because reading is a give and take between author and reader. Each has to pull their own weight.

There are three books I reread annually The first, which I take to reading every spring is Emest Hemningway’s A Moveable Feast. Published in 1964, it’s his classic memoir of 1920s Paris. The language is almost intoxicating (令人陶醉的)，an aging writer looking back on an ambitious yet simpler time. Another is Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, her poetic 1975 ramble (随笔) about everything and nothing. The third book is Julio Cortazar’s Save Twilight: Selected Poems, because poetry. And because Cortazar.

While I tend to buy a lot of books, these three were given to me as gifs, which might add to the meaning I attach to them. But I imagine that, while money is indeed wonderful and necessary, rereading an author’s work is the highest currency a reader can pay them. The best books are the ones that open further as time passes. But remember, it’s you that has to grow and read and reread in order to better understand your friends.

10 . When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline(座机)?

These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.

Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter (29%)rely only on their smartphones according to a survey(调查). Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it’s not really necessary and they’re keeping it as a security blanket — 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home falls into that category.

More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone. Age is naturally a factor(因素)— only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who’ve perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn’t the only factor; I’d say it’s also to do with the makeup of your household.

Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone(using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).

How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?