Saturday, March 24th

    We have arrived in the hot, wet city of Bangkok. This is our first trip to Thailand. All the different smells make us want to try    the    food. We are going to eat something special for dinner tonight. The hotel we are staying in is cheap, and very clean. We plan to stay here for a few days, visit some places in the city, and then travel to Chiang Mai in the North.

    Tuesday, March 27 th

    Bangkok is wonderful and surprising. The places are interesting. We visited the famous market which was on water, and saw a lot of fruits and vegetables. Everything is so colorful, and we have taken hundreds of photos already! Later today we will leave for Chiang Mai. We will take the train north, stay in Chiang Mai for two days, and then catch a bus to Chiang Rai.

    Friday, March 30th

    Our trip to Chiang Rai was long and boring. We visited a small village in the mountains. The village people here love the quiet life—no computers or phones. They are the kindest people I have ever met. They always smile and say “hello”. Kathy and I can only speak a few words of Thai, so smiling is the best way to show our kindness. I feel good here and hope to be able to come back next year.

    Psychology tells us that many people hate to take risks. But it is good for us to take risks, especially when the risk is to achieve a desired result. In that way, we become stronger and braver.

    Our human nature should be to take risks, but some people just sit and wish they didn't have the fear to move on. This is because they failed a few times in their lives. Please step out and don't let the past hold you back from living life to the fullest. Move forward and move on! In studying the psychology of taking risks, we find that human provides us with the desire to experiment and take chances.

    Risk taking is a great advantage that allowed our ancestors to become stronger and stronger day by day. By taking risks they fought off enemies and discovered new territories. This attitude has become a part of our modern culture. Riding a roller coaster is a common risk taking activity. Even each person seems to enjoy the risk although they have the understanding that it is dangerous. This psychological and biological connection creates an interesting connection between what is unsafe and what humans enjoy.

    Getting in a car each day is a risk. Getting out of bed is a risk, too. We need to take risks so that we can complete many things. Astronauts take risks when they get inside a rocket; however, the things they achieve are great. Businessmen take a risk when they buy parts of a company, however, without doing that, they could not make more money.

    We need to take risks so that we can gain something. It is impossible to move forward in life, earn money, enjoy a relationship, play a sport, or doing anything else without taking a risk. It is all part of the game. It's one of the most important parts of life.

    Ever wondered whether punishment actually makes people cooperate (合作)? A team of scientists created an experiment to figure it out and the results were pretty unexpected.

    To understand what they found, you have to know why these scientists were studying punishment. They were trying to figure out why people cooperate when it's often so easy to profit at others expense. Why don't friends steal from each other? Why do parents bother to feed their children? If the answer to these questions is obvious to you, congratulations, you are ahead of scientists. They're still trying to figure it out.

    In this experiment, researchers had 225 Chinese students play a game, where if the students cooperated, they'd all get a number of points. But if one defected (变节) and everyone else cooperated, the defector would get a lot of points, and the cooperators would lose out. This game represents a lot of real life situations where you struggle with a decision: work together and do OK, or run off with the rewards, ruining everybody else's day.

    This is actually a pretty ordinary economic experiment. But the researchers added two changes to see if they could mimic(糢拟)the real world better. Change one: some students played many rounds together, so they'd learn who they could trust. Change two: people could punish each other, sacrificing a point or two to destroy another player's score.

    In the end, the researchers found that playing multiple rounds made people cooperate more, which definitely mimics human society. But the whole punishment thing led to a surprise: punishing didn't actually make people cooperate more. In fact, it made them cooperate less.

    So the scientists still don't know why people cooperate, though it looks like it has more to do with groups sticking together than it does with punishment.

    Did you know that badminton is also a fast-paced competitive sport? Badminton has been a Summer Olympic sport since 1992. Para-badminton will be included in the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. Here's what you need to know if your child is interested in badminton.

    Badminton is played on a 44-foot-long rectangular (矩形的) court that is 17 feet wide for singles and 20 feet wide for doubles. It is divided in the middle by a net placed 5 feet off the ground, like volleyball, not at ground level like tennis.

    In competition, each match is a set of three games played to 21 points. There is a one-minute break when a player or team reaches 11 points, and a two-minute break in between the first and second games and the second and third games.

    Age kids can start: About 6 years old.

    Best for kids who: Have good skills, are patient and hardworking, and can handle the pressure of one-on-one or two-on-two competition.

    Team or individual: Matches can be singles (one-on-one) or doubles (two-on-two).

    Fun fact: Badminton is the only sport that has mixed doubles event in the Olympic Games.

    Costs: Beginners are expected to pay $30 to $40 for an entry-level racket (球拍). Badminton shoes are similar in price to other athletic shoes. Join a club or team for lessons and court time. A one-hour group lesson for beginners should cost $20 to $25, with costs increasing as your child moves up the ranks. You will also pay entry fees for competitions.

    Time commitment required: Beginners will play for just an hour or two per week.

Potential for injury: Players have a very low risk of injury. Players who wear glasses should use eye protection.

    One of the most famous buildings in the United States is Carnegie Hall, the home of classical and popular music concerts in New York. Carnegie Hall is known not just for its beauty and history, but also for its amazing sound. It has been said that the hall itself is an instrument. It takes the music and makes it larger than life.

    Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who paid for its construction. Construction on Carnegie Hall began in 1890 and the official opening night was on May 5, 1891.

    The hall was owned by the Carnegie family until 1924 when it was sold to Robert E. Simon. The building became very old and in 1960, the new owner made plans to destroy it and build an office block. Isaac Stem led a group of people who fought to save Carnegie Hall and finally, the city of New York bought it for $5 million. It was then fixed up between 1983 and 1995.

    Advertisements and stories in newspapers about how Carnegie Hall needed help to recover its history led people to send in old concert programmes and information from all over the world. Over 12,000 concert programmes were received and with these it was possible to make a proper record of Carnegie Hall's concert history.

Carnegie Hall is actually made up of several different halls, but the Main Hall, now called the Isaac Stern Hall, is the most famous. The hall itself can hold an audience of 2,804 in five levels of seating.

    Because the best and most famous musicians of all time have played at Carnegie Hall, it is the dream of most musicians who want to be great to play there. This has led to a very old joke which is now part of Carnegie Hall's history. Question: "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Answer: "Practise, practise, practise."

    During my stay in Mumbai, I often went to Pune. Though the two cities are only about 145 km away from each other, traveling that distance is a headache. But work required me to do it and I would have to travel at least twice a week at some point.

    This time I was traveling around October. We started from Pune at around 5 p.m. Like all the drivers, this taxi driver also struck up a general conversation about me and my city. He started by saying that kids are one's greatest happiness. As a bachelor(光棍汉), I got a little angry when he started all about kids and family. Then he said something that really attracted me. He said he was a musician. I asked him which instruments he played, he replied,"I have an electronic system". Thinking that taxi drivers tend to be unable to buy an electronic system, I doubtfully listened to him continuing with his story.

    His name was Naveen. He was basically a musician who was expert in playing guitar and the keyboards. Naveen had left his family after a quarrel with his father over taking music as a career. Naveen had his instruments but didn't know how to earn money. The only other thing he could do was to drive. So he joined Mumbai-to-Pune taxi services. That served him as the regular income in weekdays and in the weekends he'd perform in Pune, Nasik or Mumbai. By now, he'd become a slightly famous musician in Maharashtra. But he had a condition wherever he played. He asked that the place couldn't be ticketed. They can charge for food or drinks if it's a pub or a restaurant but no tickets.

    I heard Naveen's songs. He was amazing. He had a trick which made me call him a genius(天才). Among all the faceless drivers, Naveen stood out. He inspired me to leave my job and start a theatre career in Delhi.