You have a choice of three Supafone Mobile Digital access plans: Leisuretime, Executive and Highflier. They are designed to meet the needs of light, moderate and high-volume users. Calls in each plan are charged at only two rates: short-distance and long-distance. You enjoy big savings with off-peak calls.

LEISURETIME

Your mobile phone is mainly for personal use. You use your phone to keep family and friends in touch. You don’t want to strain your budget(预算紧张).

With this plan you enjoy the lowest monthly access fee and extremely competitive costs for calls. However, a monthly minimum call charge applies.

EXECUTIVE

You’re in business and need to be able to call your office and your clients whenever the need arises. You value the convenience of a mobile phone but need to keep a close eye on costs.

For frequent users: the monthly access fee is slightly higher, but you enjoy the savings of a discounted call rate.

HIGHFLIER

You are always on the move and communications are critical. You need to be able to call and be called wherever you are—world-wide.

As a high-volume user you pay an access fee of just $60 a month but even lower call rates.

I considered an active social life as basic human necessity. Yet when it dawned on me just how much time I was spending socializing, I realized I may be taking it to an extreme. I calculated that, on average, I was spending 22 hours or more each week on social activities. So, to see what would happen to my work output, health and wellbeing, I decided to try and cut out my social life entirely.

I knew, at times, I filled my schedule simply out of fear of missing out (FOMO), but also as a way to shift focus away from my work. For one month, I declined all in-person activities with friends: going out for drinks; dinners; parties and non-work related events, to see if it would make me more productive, improve my focus and career prospects.

On day one of the month-long experiment, I had to fight some anxiety over missing out. But as the days passed, I started to relax. I only had one option to consider for Saturday night—to stay home—and this limitation left me more satisfied in my decision. I felt more content working, reading or watching TV.

While I found more time to work, I also noticed a change in my overall health. I found myself cooking more at home, doing daily exercise, getting to bed earlier each night, reading, and enjoying moments of rest and boredom throughout the day.

Having no social life left me more free time than I’d imagine. Such idle moments are vital for creativity, and mind wandering has been linked to creative problem solving. During the experiment I found myself regularly brainstorming new ideas and reimagining existing projects.

Of course socializing is an important way to build work contacts. While one month of no social life did not impact my relationship with existing clients, if I had continued, it may harm my ability to build new ones.

Most of Bangladesh is at or below sea level. Rising seawaters linked to climate change has severely affected the country. High water from storms in coastal areas also adds salt to soil. The land is becoming salty. Crops are less productive and many areas of cropland in the country are becoming unfit for farming. These are big problems for the small country. More than 155 million people live in Bangladesh. Growing crops is the most common way Bangladeshis support themselves.

To find a way out, farmers in the country are learning to grow vegetables in so-called “vertical gardens”. The soil in these gardens is better because heavy rains have removed much of the salt.

A vertical garden is easy to make. Villagers fill containers with good soil and natural fertilizers. They put the containers on bricks so they are off the ground. They add pieces of the bricks to the soil to help water flow and drain(排水).

The farmers cut small holes into the sides of the containers. This permits vegetables with short roots a place to grow. Vegetables with long roots grow on top of the container. One bag of soil can produce up to eight kilograms of vegetables in one season.

The farmers also grow vegetables in containers made from large, thin pieces of plastic supported by bamboo. This “vertical tower” measures more than a meter wide. Each of these towers can produce more than 100 kilograms of vegetables. It costs about $12-S13 to build.

To err is human. To blame the other guy is even more human.

Common sense is not all that common.

Why tell the truth when you can come up with a good excuse?

These three popular misquotes(误用的引语)are meant to be jokes, and yet they tell us a lot about human nature. To err, or to make mistakes, is indeed a part of being human, but it seems that most people don’t want to accept the responsibility for the problem. Perhaps it is the natural thing to do. The original quote about human nature went like this, “ To err is human, to forgive is divine(神圣的).” This saying mirrors an ideal: People should be forgiving of others’ mistakes. Instead, we tend to do the opposite — find someone else to pass the blame on to. However, taking responsibility for something that went wrong is a making of great maturity(成熟).

Common sense is what we call clear thought. Having common sense means having a good general plan that will make things work well, and it also means staying with the plan. Common sense tells you that you take an umbrella out into a rainstorm, but you leave the umbrella home when you hear a weather forecast for sunshine. Common sense does not seem to be common for large organizations, because there are so many things going on that one person cannot be in charge of everything. People say that in a large company, “the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.”

And what is wrong with a society that thinks that making up a good excuse is like creating a work of art? One of the common problems with making excuses is that people, especially young people, get the idea that it’s okay not to be totally honest all the time. There is a corollary(推论)to that: If a good excuse is “good” even if it isn’t honest, then where is the place of the truth?

Do you like writing a few paragraphs every day about your experiences, hopes, memories or feelings? If you don’t, it’s time to make a change now. Write just a few paragraphs every day about your experiences, hopes, memories and feelings, and you will immediately begin to experience benefits to your personal growth and potential.

You will gradually become better at expressing yourself.     36     However,   when   you become lazy with words, you find it is more difficult to describe feelings, share experiences and make yourself understood.

    37     As you write about memories, it is like opening an old photo album. Your pen begins to explore feelings and details you have forgotten and dreams you have left behind. You suddenly remember people you would like to contact again. Writing is an activity that avoids distraction(使人分心的事) long enough for you to explore those wonderful moments of the past. Sometimes they are frightening.     38    

Writing about daily experiences and feelings provides a recorded history that will influence how you make future decisions.     39     They learned from what had happened before. Your history is important. Don’t let it be forgotten.

Writing reminds you of your dreams and keeps you moving toward them. It is a means of keeping track of your purpose and the goals that will lead you to achieve them.     40     It shows when you have been distracted and may need to give all your attention again to your writing.

Writing a little every day could provide the material that someday becomes a published book. When I wrote about my depression and my four-year-old granddaughter who got lost in the mountains, I never dreamed it would be in a book.

This month has been a _________ roller coaster of emotions and stressful moments----I’m beginning to see the physical sign of my ________.

I ________myself with a whole mass of work for college, thinking that I had weeks to start it all, _______ suddenly deadlines are coming. I find myself________blankly at a computer screen night _______ the library shuts, wishing I had the organizational skills I never_______from my mother! This doesn’t actually feel _______stressful at the time---it’s only when I think I’m finally relaxing that I _________the signals.

There seem to be a lot of little things the body does in_______to stress that are________ noticeable when you are in the midst of things but ________ later on---like finding your jaw is clenched(咬紧) and your hands in fists when you are in bed tying to sleep. It can also make your hair_______more than normal----quite annoying.

I've been dealing with theses _______ by attempting to ________the cause. I decided my work tactic(策略) from now on will be to start every assignment the week get it, and_______ the work out over weekends.________the muscle spasms(痉挛)and the hair loss, yoga is the _______. My yoga________headaches, gives me energy even after a busy day, and_________ the muscles I never knew I had. I come after an hour session feeling like I could do my day again, and then I always get good night's sleep.

If a little humanlike robot begged you not to shut it off, would you show sympathy?

In an experiment     61     (intend) to find out how people treat robots when they act like humans, many participants struggled to power down a begging robot named Nao.     62     experiment was conducted by researchers in Germany, whose findings     63     (publish) in the scientific journal PLOSOne.

Nao,     64     was designed to beg about half of the participants not to switch it off but not the other half, was used     65     (measure) if his begging affected how people reacted.

In one previous experiment, researchers found that people preferred communicating with robots with complementary (互补的) personality characteristics to     66     (they) own. And since robots can exhibit social characteristics either     67     (speak) with human voices or taking the shape of a human body, the research suggests that people tend to react “    68     (especial) social to them.”

The researchers said a possible     69     (explain) for their results was that people regarded Nao’s begging     70     “a sign of making its own decision.”