Passion For Historic Sites

Once there was a girl named Vivian who was the only child of her father. Her father was a big and successful businessman who owned seven star restaurants. He did everything only for his daughter.

Vivian was sent to the best university abroad. Although she had everything, the only thing she never owned was respect of other people.

When Vivian came back after her graduation and her father asked her to join his company as an accountant, she was naturally not happy with that. She wanted to work in a higher post but her father wanted her to start as an ordinary girl.

“Dad, I studied in the most outstanding university abroad and got a better education than any of the employees who work under you. Still, you want me to work under them?" said Vivian unhappily.

Vivian's father looked at her with a smile on his face. Vivian was annoyed by her father's reaction but she agreed to work as an accountant in the end.

After some months, there was an emergency situation in the company.One of the restaurants was short of employees because of a sudden resignation (辞职），so they were short on people to do other chores around the place and cook food fast. Vivian's father asked her to help that restaurant with him and the other employees.

When she entered the restaurant, she was hit by the air of tension around the employees. Everybody was busy doing something or other and there was a mess around the restaurant. When she went in the back of the kitchen, she saw a tower of unwashed dishes.

Her father neared her in a hurry and asked her, “Vivian, thank goodness, you are here. Darling, will you please help us and do the dishes?" He patted her on her shoulder and left her to do the dishes.

She looked at the dirty plates and spoons that were piled up before her.

“I didn't study my whole life and come first in everything to do this!”Vivian thought.

Vivian's father picked up the gloves, put them on and started doing the dishes himself.

My parents love the saying “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" so much that they even bought a pillow with those words on it. But I was recently in a situation where I was SO ready to give up.

It started last week when my friend Ollie and I were helping his grandmother Mary to carry boxes from her garage to her car for the homeless shelter rummage sale (义卖).

At the sight of a big old trunk (行李箱)，we asked Mary what was inside. But she told us that as she had lost the key, she had to find a master locksmith to figure it out. "Let me have a try!" said Ollie. “I bet I can open that lock in two minutes flat! Maybe there's a treasure inside, like gold or diamonds or an ancient map!"

Mary smiled. "I'll tell you what. If you two treasure hunters can open this trunk, you can have it, along with whatever is inside."

Ollie got a tool kit and we set out to open the lock. But he definitely lost that bet. Those two minutes turned into two hours, with no luck at all. We had tried every tool in the kit, but the lock wouldn't move slightly.

“It's no use." Ollie sighed. "I guess we have to give up."

“But we can't give up!" I said. "What about 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"?"

Ollie shook his head. "Unless you know a magical key fairy, we're never getting this unlocked."

Just then, my little brother Tex showed up. He showed great interest in the trunk. "It looks like an upside-down boat! Can I turn it over and pretend I'm sailing in the ocean?"

"Sure," Ollie replied. "It's no good for anything else."

“Ahoy!" Tex said, climbing on top after Ollie and I turned it over. “I’m the captain!” He giggled as he jumped up and down. And right then, a screw (螺丝) from a hinge (铰链) came loose and rolled to the floor.

“That's it! I know how to open it!" said Ollie.

Oh! There were only lots of shoes in the trunk!

Many years ago there lived in Holland a boy named Peter. Peter's father was one of the men who tended the gates in the dikes(堤坝)，called sluices. He opened and closed the sluices so that ships could pass out of Holland's canals into the great sea.

One afternoon in the early fall, when Peter was eight years old, his mother called him from his play. “Come, Peter,” she said. “I want you to go across the dike and take these cakes to your friend, the blind man. Remember that you shall be home before dark.”The little boy was glad to go on such an errand (跑腿)， and started off with a light heart. He stayed with the poor blind man a little while to tell him something about his walk along the dike-the sun, the flowers and the ships far out at sea. Then he remembered his mother's wish that he should return before dark. Bidding his friend goodbye, he set out for home.

As he walked beside the canal, he noticed how the rains had swollen the water, and how they beat against the side of the dike, and he thought of his father's gates. “I am glad they are so strong,” he said to himself.“If the dike gave way what should we do? These pretty fields would be covered with water.” As he walked along the dike he sometimes stopped to pick the pretty blue flowers that grew beside the road, or to listen to the rabbits' soft tread as they rustled through the grass.

Suddenly he heard a noise. It was the sound of trickling water! He stopped and looked down. There was a small hole in the dike, through which a tiny stream was flowing. Any child in Holland is frightened at the thought of a leak in the dike. Peter understood the danger at once. If the water ran through a little hole it would soon make a larger one, and the whole country would be flooded. In a moment he saw what he must do. Throwing away his flowers, he climbed down the side of the dike and thrust his finger into the tiny hole. The flowing of the water was stopped! “Oh!” he said to himself. “I can keep the water back with my finger. Holland shall not be drowned while I am here. ”

This was all very well at first, but soon it grew dark and cold. The little fellow shouted and screamed. “Come here; come here,” he called. But no one heard him; no one came to help him.

It grew still colder, and his arm ached, and began to grow stiff and numb.

The moon and stars looked down on the child crouching (蹲) on a stone on the side of the dike.

6 . I’ve long believed that positive living isn’t about being optimistic every minute of every day. That kind of permanently happy state can’t be the goal, because it’s impossible to achieve.

It turns out that psychological research finds true happiness comes from authentic positivity, and authentic positivity comes from emotional flexibility.

Being flexible emotionally means being open to the full range of emotional experiences, including the challenging ones like anger, disappointment and sadness. Emotional flexibility means being able to shift behaviors and mindsets to meet different situational needs, and adapting when circumstances change.

However, emotionally flexible people are not chameleons (变色龙) whose outlook changes based on which way the wind is blowing. Instead, emotional flexibility is a skill that helps people judge the complexities of daily life, and stick to their deeply held values.

I’ve learned a new word that I’d like to share with you: Eudaimonia (幸福感). Eudaimonia is the opposite of hedonism (享乐主义), the idea that happiness comes from the constant pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Eudaimonia, by contrast, encourages us to pursue meaning and authenticity, growth and honest joy. Both are philosophical approaches to happiness, and recent psychological thought is leaning toward eudaimonia as a more sustainable, satisfying model.

Eudaimonia was first mentioned by Aristotle, who got the term from the Greek word “daimon,” which means “true nature.” Tome, walking a positive path means accepting that we each have positive true nature and permanent goodness. What we learn from the concept of eudaimonia is that we are best equipped to realize this nature when we are emotionally honest and flexible.

8 . How to Feel Connected

It's easy to feel disconnected from what is going on around you in today's fast-paced world.     1     You can get in touch and feel connected, however, by following the tips below:

Consider why you feel disconnected. Knowing what is making you feel disconnected can help you choose the best ways to address it.     2     Ask yourself these questions: Are you keeping yourself occupied with work too much? Do you rely on electronic communication instead of face to face communication? Do you lack friendships that are satisfying?

Interact with people in person. Technology is a great way to stay in touch, but sometimes you need to spend time with other people in person.     3     You can also take steps to feel more connected by making small-talk with strangers who are sharing parts of your day.

    4    

Your loved ones could feel shy, so you may never know how to improve your relationship unless you ask the right questions. Asking them to open the doors can give you some insight on what you can do. Learning this information can help to strengthen your bond.

Show your commitment to them. Simply showing up and being there for your loved ones says a lot about how much you value your relationships. Putting in the time shows them that you are committed and want to stay connected.     5    

Show appreciation. A simple “thank you” goes a very long way. Unfortunately, it is something that people who are close often take for granted. Telling someone you appreciate their time, love, and efforts can strengthen your bond and help you to become more connected.

9 . Artificial—intelligence systems like Grammarly, an automated grammar—checker, are trained with data. for instance, translation software is fed sentences translated by humans, Grammarly's training data involve a large number of standard error—free sentences and human—corrected sentences.     1     The software then looks at a user's writing: if a line of words seems ungrammatical, it tries to spot how the generally supposed   mistake is most closely similar to   one from its training inputs.

    2     Advances in language technology have been impressive in, for example, speech recognition, which involves another sort of statistical guess—whether or not a stretch of sound matches a certain line of words.     3     . It can rate the tone of an email before you send it, after being trained on texts that have been assessed by humans, for example as “admiring” or “confident”.

But grammar is the real magic of language, joining words into structures, joining those structures into sentences, and doing so in a way that maps onto meaning.     4     . Computers can analyse grammatical sentences fairly well, labeling things like nouns and verb phrases. But they struggle with sentences that are difficult to analyse, precisely because they are ungrammatical—in other words, written by the kind of person who needs Grammarly.

    5     But computers don't work in meaning or intention, they work in formulae（惯用语）. Humans, by contrast, can usually understand even sentences that are not grammatically correct, because of the ability to guess the contents of other minds. Grammar—checking computers illustrate not how bad humans are with language, but just how good.