Last year my summer holiday was spoiled by my bringing along a modern convenience that was too convenient for my own good: the iPad. Instead of looking at nature, I checked my e-mail. Instead of paddling a small boat, I followed my Twitter feed（推特简讯）. Instead of reading great novels, I stuck to reading four newspapers each morning. I was behaving as if I were still in the office. My body was on vacation, but my head wasn't.

    So this year I made up my mind to try something different: withdrawal from the Internet. I knew it wouldn't be easy, since I'm bad at self-control. But I was determined. I started by giving the iPad to my wife.

    The cellphone signal at our house was worse than in the past, making my at tempts at cheating an experience in frustration （沮丧）. I was trapped, forced to go through with my plan. Largely breaking away from e-mail, Twitter and my favorite newspaper websites, I had few ways to connect to the world except for the radio—and how much radio can one listen to, really? I had to do what Ihad planned to do all along: read books.

    This experience has had a happy ending. With determination and the strong support of my wife, I won in my vacation struggle against the Internet, realizing finally that it was I, not the iPad, that was the problem. I knew I had won when we passed a Star bucks and my wife asked if I wanted to stop to use the Wi-Fi.“I don't need it,” I said．

    However, as we return to post-vacation life, a harder test begins: Can I continue when I'mback at work?

    There are times when the need to know what's being said right now is great. I have no intention of giving up my convenience completely. But I hope to resist the temptation to check my e-mail every five minutes, which leads to checking my Twitter feed and a website or two.

    I think a vacation is supposed to help you rest your brain to become more productive. Here I hope this one worked.

Canadian short story writer Alice Munro wonthe Nobel Prize for Literature. Eighty-two-year-old Munro is only the 13thwoman to win the 112-year-old prize．

Munro didn't publish her first collectionof short stories until she was 37 years old, but her stories have always beenwell-received. Lots of her stories share similar themes and characters, buteach story has its own twists and turns.

Even though she's won Canada's most famousliterary award, the Giller Prize, twice, winning the Nobel Prize for Literatureis the cherry on top of Munro's career. “It brings this incredible recognition，both of her and her career，and of the dedication to the short story,”said one person.

Along with the well-respected title comes1.3 million dollars. Munro said everything was “so surprising and wonderful”and that she was “dazed by all the attention and affection that has been comingmy way.”

Munro knew she was in the running—she wasnamed the second-most likely person to win this year's prize, after HarukiMurakami（村上春树）of Japan—but she never thought that she would win.

Munro's win also represents the long wayCanadian writers have come. “When I began writing there was a very smallcommunity of Canadian writers and little attention was paid by the world. NowCanadian writers are read, admired and respected around the globe,” Munro saidon Thursday.

She is technically not the first Canadianto win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but many like to think that she is．In 1976 Saul Bellow, who was born in Quebecbut moved to Chicago when he was still a child, won the prize. Even though hewas born in Canada, he is mostly considered to be an American writer.

“This is a win for us all. Canadians, byour very nature，are not very nationalistic,” said Geoffrey Taylor. “But things like thissuddenly make you want to find a flag．”

She wasn't sure whether she would keepwriting if she won the prize，saying that it would be “nice to go out with a bang. But this may change mymind.”

    “Have a nice day!” may be a pleasant gesture or a meaningless expression. When my friend Maxie says “Have a nice day!” with a smile, I know she sincerely cares about what happens to me. I feel loved and secure since another person cares about me and wishes me well.

    “Have a nice day. Next!” This version(版本) of the expression is spoken by a salesgirl at the supermarket who is rushing me and my groceries out the door. The words come out in the same tone with a fixed procedure. They are spoken at me, not to me. Obviously, the concern for my day and everyone else's is the management's attempt to increase business.

    The expression is one of those behaviors that help people get along with each other. Sometimes it indicates the end of a meeting. As soon as you hear it, you know the meeting is at an end. Sometimes the expression saves us when we don't know what to say. “Oh, you just had a tooth out? I'm terribly sorry, but have a nice day.”

    The expression can be pleasant. If a stranger says “Have a nice day” to you, you may find it heart-warming because someone you don't know has tried to be nice to you.

    Although the use of the expression is an insincere, meaningless social custom at times, there is nothing wrong with the sentence except that others who speak it without thinking may not really care about my day. But in a strange and comfortable way, it's nice to know they care enough to pretend they care when they really don't care all that much. While the expression may not often be sincere, it is always spoken. The point is that people say it all the time when they like.

    Almost every machine with moving parts has wheels, yet no one knows exactly when the first wheel was invented or what it was used for. We do know, however, that they existed over 5,500 years ago in ancient Asia.

    The oldest known transport wheel was discovered in 2002 in Slovenia. It is over 5,100 years old. Evidence suggests that wheels for transport didn't become popular for a while, though. This could be because animals did a perfectly good job of carrying farming tools and humans around.

    But it could also be because of a difficult situation. While wheels need to roll on smooth surfaces, roads with smooth surfaces weren't going to be constructed until there was plenty of demand for them. Eventually, road surfaces did become smoother, but this difficult situation appeared again a few centuries later. There had been no important changes in wheel and vehicle design before the arrival of modem road design.

    In the mid-1700s, a Frenchman came up with a new design of road—a base layer (层) of large stones covered with a thin layer of smaller stones. A Scotsman improved on this design in the 1820s and a strong, lasting road surface became a reality. At around the same lime, metal hubs (the central part of a wheel) came into being, followed by the pneumatic tyre(充气轮胎) in 1846. Alloy wheels were invented in 1967, sixty years after the appearance of tarmacked roads (柏油路). As wheel design took off, vehicles got faster and faster.

    Ramadan is one of the most important festivals for Muslims. The name of the festival comes from the Arabic month in which it is celebrated. Ramadan is celebrated in countries all over the world, especially in Africa and the Middle East. The time for celebrating Ramadan varies each year. People celebrate it in the ninth month of the Arabic lunar calendar. During Ramadan, people must not eat during the day: from when the sun comes up to when the sun goes down, people celebrating Ramadan will not eat or smoke. When the sun has gone down, however, the celebration begins. People often stay up all night eating singing and dancing.

    In late spring, many people around the world celebrate Easter. The festival is a celebration of spring and it is also a religious holiday. It is the time for Easter bunnies and egg hunts, and of course for eating lots of delicious foods. Easter is celebrated in late March or early April but the exact dates are different form year to year. People celebrate Easter in different ways: in some countries, the Easter Bunny—a big rabbit—will visit and children will go on egg hunts, looking for eggs and candy that have been hidden by their parents. In other countries, Easter is a time for children to dress up like witches and go from door to door asking for candy—much like Halloween in the US. The Easter Bunny and the Easter Egg are popular symbols of the festival.

    Finding true love can be pretty tough for a lot of people, but a lady from a fairly well-known San Francisco advertising agency seems to think money helps. She is offering $10,000 to any of her friends who can introduce her to her Mr. Right. She wants to find her future husband through this way.

    The unnamed husband seeker who sent out the email had just finished reading the best-selling book named Lean In. It was 11 p. m. on a Sunday night and she realized this was the second self-help book she had read in the month. She was still single. Things were not looking fine, but there was hope for her still. If the book had taught her anything, it was that she needed to take a more positive role in finding love. After all, if she wanted to get a better job, she wouldn't just sit outside an employer's building and wait for someone to offer it to her, so why should finding a husband be any different? But instead of going out and meeting new people she decided to write an email to all her friends, offering to give them $10,000 on her wedding day if any of them managed to introduce her to her future husband.

    “I am writing you today because I've decided to make an aggressive action plan on finding the man that I get to hang out with forever,” the woman writes in her email. “Introducing me to my husband is just not high on your to-do list. But I think I have an idea that might change that…” You guessed it, and this is where she offers to reward her “closest friends” with cold hard cash.

    “I will personally give ten thousand dollars to the friend who introduces me to my husband.

    Here is how the program works:

    Step 1: You set me up on a date with a man.

    Step 2: I marry that man.

    Step 3: I give you $10,000 on my wedding day.

    I know you're thinking that this is nuts. Just plain crazy. 'You can find a husband without giving $10,000.' Well for starters, thank you! I'm happy.”