2 . By day, Robert Titterton is a lawyer. In his spare  time though he goes on stage beside pianist Maria Raspopova — not as a musician but as her page turner. “I’m not a trained musician, but I’ve learnt to read music so I can help Maria in her performance.”

Mr Titterton is chairman of the Omega Ensemble but has been the group’s official page turner for the past four years. His job is to sit beside   the pianist and turn the pages of the score so the musician doesn’t have to break the flow of sound by doing it themselves. He said he became just as nervous as those playing instruments on stage.

“A lot of skills are needed for the job. You have to make sure you don’t turn two pages at once and make sure you find the repeats in the music   when you have to go back to the right spot.” Mr Titterton explained.

Being a page turner requires plenty of practice. Some pieces of music can go for 40 minutes and require up to 50 page turns, including back turns for repeat passages. Silent onstage communication is key, and each pianist has their own style of “nodding” to indicate a page turn which they need to practise with their page turner.

But like all performances, there are moments when things go wrong. “I was turning the page to get ready for the next page, but the draft wind from the turn caused the spare pages to fall off the stand,” Mr Titterton said, “Luckily I was able to catch them and put them back.”

Most page turners are piano students or up-and-coming concert pianists, although Ms Raspopova has once asked her husband to   help her out on stage.

“My husband is the worst page turner,” she laughed. “He’s interested in the music, feeling every note, and I have to say: ‘Turn, turn!’ Robert is the best page turner I’ve had in my entire life.”

The Xi’an City Wall is the most complete city wall that has survived China’s long history. It     1     (build) originally to protect the city     2     the Tang dynasty and has now been completely restored (修复). It is possible       3     (walk) or bike the entire 14 kilometers.

We accessed the wall through the South Gate. The wall is 12 meters high and from here you can see streams of people moving inside and outside the City Wall.

After     4     (spend) some time looking at all the defensive equipment at the wall, we decided it was time for some action and what     5     (good) than to ride on a piece of history!

We     6     (hire) our bikes from the rental place at the South Gate. My bike was old and shaky     7     did the job. It took us about 3 hours to go all     8     way around the Xi’an City Wall. Supposedly you can do it in two hours, but we stopped at the different gates and     9     (watchtower) to take pictures or just to watch the local people going about their     10     (day) routines.

4 . I have the same 24 hours in a day as you do, but I have made specific choice that allow me to make the most of every day and still feel happy and relaxed.     1    

Pick the most important.

    2     Focus on spending time that for you is fun and productive. I chose the life of an adviser because I like to work with companies, but don't want the life of a big company CEO. My choices are based on the lifestyle I want.

Combine your activities.

Many people go crazy trying to figure out how to spend time with friends, family, work, play, etc.     3     Find ways to enjoy them in a combined manner. Build your social life around people in your work environment. Find people in your company who share common interests and develop your career (职业) around the people and activities you love.

    4    

You would think learning takes more time from you, but actually there are always new ways of doing things that can save you time on daily tasks, freeing you up for the most important. Always be looking for a new way to gain back an hour here or there.

Lighten up.

The world won't come to an end in most cases just because you left a few things undone. Celebrate progress and keep refining (改进) toward a happy productive existence.     5     Every completion is a small victory that adds up in a big way.

5 . Over the past 38 years, Mr. Wang has pretended to be someone else many times,and has even learned to ________ different dialects (方言), leading to him being described as an “Oscar-winning actor”.

The 60-year-old is not an actor, but a ________ However,he is more devoted to his “________ ” than any real actor.

In the 1990s, a group of thieves often sold stolen goods with the help of some beggars. To look into the ________, Wang disguised (伪装) himself and ________ the beggars. Dirty shorts and old shoes gave him the ________ of a real beggar and his convincing dialect soon won him the ________ of the beggars.

“I often ________ them to drink alcohol. Once they were ________,they began to talk a lot,"Wang said. “I'd then ________ myself to use the toilet, ________ what the beggars said, and send the ________ to my teammates.”

Wang, who is often in ________ situations, is also a judo (柔道) master.   “As long as I get close enough, no criminal can ________ from me,” he said.

Wang's ________ won him several honors, including a National May Day Labor Medal and 11 Citations of Merit.

8 . An Australian professor is developing a robot to monitor the health of grazing cattle, a development that could bring big changes to a profession that's relied largely on a low-tech approach for decades but is facing a labor shortage.

Salah Sukkarieh, a professor at the University of Sydney, sees robots as necessary given how cattlemen are aging. He is building a four-wheeled robot that will run on solar and electric power. It will use cameras and sensors to monitor the animals. A computer system will analyze the video to determine whether a cow is sick. Radio tags (标签) on the animals will measure temperature changes. The quality of grassland will be tracked by monitoring the shape, color and texture (质地) of grass. That way, cattlemen will know whether they need to move their cattle to another field for nutrition purposes.

Machines have largely taken over planting, watering and harvesting crops such as com and wheat, but the monitoring of cattle has gone through fewer changes.

For Texas cattleman Pete Bonds, it's increasingly difficult to find workers interested in watching cattle. But Bonds doesn't believe a robot is right for the job. Years of experience in the industry - and failed attempts to use technology - have convinced him that the best way to check cattle is with a man on a horse. Bonds, who bought his first cattle almost 50 years ago, still has each of his cowboys inspect 300 or 400 cattle daily and look for signs that an animal is getting sick.

Other cattlemen see more promise in robots. Michael Kelsey Paris, vice president of the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association, said a robot could be extremely useful given rising concerns about cattle theft. Cattle tend to be kept in remote places and their value has risen, making them appealing targets.

9 . I have worked as a keeper at the National Zoo, Paris for 11 years. Spot and Stripe are the first tiger cubs that have ever been born here. Globally, a third of Sumatran cubs in zoos don't make it to adulthood, so I decided to give them round-the-clock care at home.

I've got two children—the younger one, Kynan, was extremely happy about the tigers arriving - but all of us really looked forward to being part of their lives and watching them grow. I wasn't worried about bringing them into my home with my wife and kids. These were cubs. They weighed about 2.5 kg and were so small that there was absolutely no risk.

As they grew more mobile, we let them move freely around the house during the day, but when we were asleep we had to contain them in a large room, otherwise they'd get up to mischief. We'd come down in the morning to find they'd turned the room upside down, and left it looking like a zoo.

Things quickly got very intense due to the huge amount of energy required to look after them. There were some tough times and I just felt extremely tired. I was grateful that my family was there to help. We had to have a bit of a production line going, making up “tiger milk”, washing baby bottles, and cleaning the floors.

When Spot and Stripe were four months old, they were learning how to open doors and jump fences, and we knew it really was time for them to go. It was hard for us to finally part with them. For the first few days, Kynan was always a bit disappointed that the cubs weren't there.

I'm not sad about it. I'm hands-on with them every day at the zoo, and I do look back very fondly on the time that we had them.