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    Jack Johnson is one of the most popular singer-songwriters in the world.

Jack was born on May 18,1975 in Hawaii. Being the son of a famous surfer,Jack naturally has an interest in surfing. Most of his life lessons were learned in the water. At the age of 17,Jack entered the finals of the Pineline Masters—the world's most famous surfing competition. Everyone thought Jack would become a professional surfer like his father. Unluckily, one month later,he had a deadly accident while surfing and was seriously hurt.

    Life is like a revolving door. When it closes ,it also opens. Jack started to practice playing the guitar and write songs when he was staying in hospital. At first,his father thought Jack only did it for fun,but soon he was surprised at the great progress his son had made.

When studying in the university, Jack didn't stop practicing his guitar skills. He played the guitar for school parties. He wrote songs and sang them for his teachers and friends. They liked his songs. His first music album Brush fire Fairytales came out in 2001. It was a great success. His second album，On and On ， was much like his first. They were filled with sweet，easy-going songs

that everybody liked listening to. Later Jack had lots of concerts in and out of America. He became popular all over the world.

    Jack had five albums by 2010 and more than 15 million copies of them were sold. His music doesn't fit into any of the popular music styles like pop, rock, R&B or hip-hop. It is more like folk music, played with a guitar and beautiful voice. When listening to his songs, you feel like lying on the beach enjoying the warm sunshine.

    Jack is a talent, though he himself says he is only a surfer who loves music. In his songs we can find his secret of success: Whatever happens in our lives, we have to accept it and do the best we can.

    At the opening of the sports meeting, our class was chosen to be the team holding colorful flags.

    At firsts I thought we were lucky, because this work seemed so simple that we could finish it easily. Each of us only needed to hold a flag of different color. However, the work was not as easy as I thought. There were two weeks for us to practice before the sports meeting. During this time, all the classmates were trained strictly. We practiced walking, holding the flags and standing still without moving for one or two hours.

    Finally, the day came. At the opening of the sports meeting, we were the first class to appear. As we went through the platform (主席台), we shouted out our saying loudly when we walked through step by step, holding different colorful flags. As we arrived at our place we formed two lines and started running along the sides of the playground. At last, all of the classmates stood one by one, holding the flags and circling the whole playground. When the wind flew, our colorful flags flew. How beautiful!

    After that, other classes put on many wonderful shows, but we couldn't see anything. What's worse, we had to stand the whole time until the whole opening finished, which meant that we stood for three hours without any break!

    This experience made me realize that we cannot tell the difficulty only by the appearance of a job.

    Jack thought himself a basketball fan. He watched quite a lot of American NBA basketball games. Not only did he watch them, he spent much of his free time playing on the court too. Then came the final year of his middle school. All of his regular teammates stopped showing up on the court because they were simply too busy preparing for the high school entrance exam to play. He was, of course, under much stress himself, like everyone else. A good exam result meant a good high school; a mediocre(平庸的) score meant a mediocre school. Much was at stake. However, he loved basketball so much that he still found time to play, this time with a group of guys who were said to have skipped classes(逃课) before.

    Some of his teachers started worrying about him. They asked his mother to go to school to let her know that Jack was hanging out with problem kids. When his mother returned home that day, she wanted to talk to Jack. Knowing the purpose of her visit to the school, Jack thought his mother would punish him for befriending those bad guys. To his surprise, his mother was not angry with him at all. She wanted to hear her son's side of the story. So Jack told his mother about what he knew of Simon and Peter. Simon's parents were badly ill; Peter's father had lost his job. They both seemed to Jack to be normal kids. Jack's mother thought for a moment, then went on to say that she was OK with her son playing with them and that she and her son should think of ways to help these kids. Soon Jack's mum introduced some part-time jobs to Simon and Peter, which they accepted. She believed in her son and cared about those who were less lucky.

    Jack's basketball friends and he have left for different places, but they still keep in touch. He knows Peter is now a manager of a local bank.  Simon is currently a freshman at a university. Sadly, it is impossible to get together to play basketball again, but whenever they get on the phone, they talk about it all the time.

    Thomas Alva Edison is one of the greatest inventors of all times. One of his most famous achievements is the electric light. He tried thousands of times to make a long lasting light bulb (灯泡). Although the light bulb is not his invention, he is the only one to have made such a successful light bulb. Many people remember him for the invention of the electric light. He held a lot of patents (专利权) worldwide. Many of them were approved (批准) in USA.

    We can find his inventions in many fields. In fact, many of the advanced inventions were based on his ideas. He invented a phonograph (留声机), a film picture camera, a ticket recorder and so on.

    Edison was not a good student at school. But he loved to do new experiments. When he was still a child, he built his first lab to perform his experiments.

    An amazing story of Edison's childhood is that he almost made his servant die. Edison used to think that birds ate insects and these insects might make them fly. So, he collected these insects and blended them to make juice. He then let his servant drink the juice. After drinking the juice, the girl lost her sense. But luckily, she was saved.

    My name is Tim. Daddy didn't know how to show love. He went to work every day and blamed(责备)me for the mistakes I had made when he came home.

    Once I broke my leg and it was Mum who held me in her arms all the way to the hospital.

    Later Dad pulled the car right up to the door of the hospital.

    They asked him to move it, saying the place was saved for the ambulances(救护车), for an emergency. Dad shouted, "What do you think this is? A tour bus?"

    At my birthday parties, Dad always seemed out of place. He just kept himself busy blowing up balloons, setting up tables, and welcoming the guests. It was Mum who carried the cake with the candles on it for me to blow out.  

    When I learned to ride a bike, I asked him not to leave me alone, but he said it was time. I fell and Mum ran to pick me up, but he stopped her. I was so mad that I showed him that I could ride it myself. He just smiled.

    When I went to college, Mum did all the writing. He just sent money and a little note about how great his garden looked now just because I wasn't playing football on it.

    Whenever I called home, he acted like he wanted to talk but always said," Wait, Tim. I'll get your mother."

    When I got married, Mum cried.

    He just blew his nose loudly and left the room.

    Daddy just didn't know how to show love, unless.

    Was it possible he showed it and I didn't recognize it?

    When I was a little child, my mom sometimes liked to make breakfast food for dinner. And I remember one night she made breakfast after a long, hard day at work.

    That evening, my mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage and burned cookies in front of my dad. I remembered waiting to see if anyone would say anything. Yet all my dad did was to reach for his cookie, smile at my mom and ask me how my day was at school. I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him eat every bite of that cookie!

    When I got up from the table that evening, I remembered hearing my mom say sorry to my dad for burning the cookies. And I'll never forget what he said, "Dear, I love burned cookies."

    Later that night, I went to kiss Dad goodnight, and I asked him if he did really like his burned cookies. He kissed me and said, "Your mom had a hard day at work today, and she's very tired.  Besides, a little burned cookie never hurt anyone!"

    Life is full of imperfect(完美)things and imperfect people. We need to learn to accept each other's faults and differences.