Your mobile is now much more than just a communication device - more like a remote control for your life. You still call it a "mobile" from habit, but it is an organizer, entertainment device, payment device and security（安全） center, all developed and manufactured by engineers.

    What we do need is better mobiles and more intelligence. Because it knows your travel timetable it can check for problems on the roads or with the trains, giving you the best route into work. It can control your home, reprogramming the central heating if you need to get up earlier and keeping an eye on your home by connecting your mobile with the home security system. It is your payment system—you can pay for tickets for journeys or buy items in shops by placing the phone near a sensor(感应器). With an understanding of location, the mobile can also provide directions, or even tell you if your friends or family are nearby.

    Usually it will start work even before you wake. It will work with your home entertainment system while you sleep to find programmes that will interest you and download them as a podcast to watch on the train or in other spare moments. It will intelligently work out what to do with incoming phone calls and messages. Because it knows your diary it will also know, for example, to direct voice calls to voicemail when you are in a meeting, perhaps providing a discrete text summary of the caller and the nature of their call.

    With its understanding of almost all aspects of your life; many new services become possible. For example, a “Good Food” meal planning service could send daily suggestions for your evening meal based on learned preferences, previous selections made and the likely contents of your refrigerator.

    Ten years ago the mobile was purely a device for making voice calls. Now it is a camera, MP3 player, and texting device. This is only the start of an evolution that will turn it into our trusted and indispensable companion in life.

    The most wonderful time of the year (the Christmas season) is also the most stressful for lots of people struggling to fit in increased end-of-the-year workloads, holiday parties, shopping, guest hosting, travel, and seeing friends and relatives who you'd otherwise avoid. Luckily, the same coping mechanisms that can help relieve stress and find better balance during the year also work for this holiday.

    Here are four tips to finding work—life balance during this season.

1） Know and avoid your stressors(压力源).

    If cooking for a large group, baking cookies, or Christmas shopping are your key stressors, don't do them. Lots of grocery stores will help cater your next holiday meal. Bakeries exist for a reason, and gift cards are much appreciated by all. Stop trying to live up to someone else's expectations of the holidays and stay merry by outsourcing the pain points.

2） Get flexible at work.

    If you normally travel an hour each way at work, see if your boss will let you work from home in this special season to save time, get more done, and reduce your stress. Or ask if you can start work from home in the mornings and come to the office later in the day to avoid peak hours. Leave early and finish your day from the comfort of home, too.

3） Make your own list and check it twice.

    Make a to-do list for yourself, for both work and life, then divide it up into categories like “must do,” “want to do,” and “feel obligated to do.” If you can remove any or all of your required list, the rest of your to-dos will start to look a lot easier.

    Once you have your lists in order, it's time to start crossing things off. In between your must-dos tasks, include a want-to-do task to break things up and re-energize yourself. Yes, this holiday is a time to give back to others and be selfless, but there's still a bit of “self” in selflessness, isn't there?

4）If you start to feel a cold coming on, come to a full and complete stop.

    The best way to stop a cold from exploding into a weeks-long sickness is to stop it at the start. Unless a task or activity is an absolute necessity, cancel your plans, put away your to-do lists, and settle in for a long winter's nap. A day of rest and enough sleep is the only thing you NEED right now. Feel bad about declining holiday invitations from your friends and family? You're doing them a favor. Once people hear that you're sick, they'll be glad you stayed away — they don't want to come down with a cold during the holiday any more than you do!

    It is certain that you can feel less stressed in this hectic season when you stop expecting so much from yourself, because nobody puts so much expectation on you as you do to yourself. Trying to satisfy clients, co-workers, friends and family can be draining and can finally negatively impact you in many ways. When you simplify things up front, you relieve the stress off of yourself and everyone else in the process. Stop focusing on what you feel like you're obligated to do, and start focusing on what you want and need to do, the load will get lighter and you will feel a lot merrier under the Christmas tree.

    Do you ever wish you were as thin as a model or as strong as your favorite football player? Maybe you wish you were taller or just shaped a little differently. Those thoughts are a natural part of growing up. How can you feel better about your body?

    Firstly, learning what you can and can't change about your body is part of growing up. It can be hard to accept. But when people accept the way they look, they often feel happier.

    Eating healthy foods can make people feel better about their bodies. Why? Because eating ________will make you full of energy and keep your body working just the way it should.

    Watching TV and playing computer games can be fun, but it doesn't do much for your body because your body stays still. Those are called sedentary(需要久坐的)activities because you sit while you do them.

    But when you move your body by playing, dancing, taking part in sports, or even cleaning your room , you exercise your muscles(肌肉).When you exercise a muscle, it gets stronger and stronger. And when you have strong muscles, you can do whatever you want to do.

    People feel better about their bodies when their bodies can do whatever they want them to do. So climb a hill, jump rope, ride a bike, swim in a pool ,run up the stairs, or even do the hula and enjoy all your body can do!

    There is a woman named Tao Porchon-Lynch. She was born in India in 1918. So, if you do the math, she's 99. And at the age of 99, she has been recognized as the oldest yoga teacher in the world. She has been teaching yoga in a gym in her hometown, full-time, since 1967.

    But that's not all she's done. She has also been a model, actress and dancer. She became a model after she graduated from high school. She acted in more than ten fields. She won a lot of medals as a dancer in many competitions. She once said, “If you try your best and never give up, nothing is impossible.” And she is a firm believer in positive thinking. She dreams the impossible dreams, and she is also well known as a thinker.

    Tao Porchon-Lynch is not the person who talks the talk; she is the person who walks the walk. When she makes up her mind to do something, she takes action to do it without delay. At the age of 85, she learned how to dance and even won several dance competitions. She offers this piece of advice to others, “Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Don't delay. Tomorrow never comes.”

    So, what about retirement? At 98, she is well past the age when many people make retirement plans. Retiring, it turns out, is not Tao's style. “A little girl, who is only 6 years old and is now learning yoga with me, once asked me, ‘Dear granny, what are you going to do when you retire?'” Tao Porchon-Lynch told the little girl that she had no plans to retire but instead would continue to teach yoga and dance her way to next planet.

    Today is a perfect day that can leave you with good memories you may someday share with your friends. Here's how:

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} You can see or do something a million times, but you can only see or do it for the first time once. As a result, first time experiences usually leave a deep mark in our minds for the rest of our lives. So try to experience something different and you'll have more memories.

    Work on something that's great to you.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Life is short. Today is the day to take action. Smile and notice what's right. Everything that happens in life is neither good nor bad.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} And no matter how it turns out, it always ends up just the way it should. Either you succeed or you learn something.

    Be true to yourself. The only shoes you can wear are your own. If you aren't being yourself. You aren't truly living.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Make a new friend. People are interesting creatures, and no two people arc exactly alike.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}Find out what makes them different. They'll likely open your eyes to wonderful ideas. And you never know, they just might change your life.

Be present. Be here now. Remember, right now is the only dear moment to you. Right now is life. Don't miss it.

A. Learn a new skill.

B. Try something new.

C. It just depends on your opinion.

D. So meet someone new today.

E. And in fact, you're only existing.

F. Pay close attention to what you're doing.

G. Make yourself busy with something meaningful.

    Today, in most of the theatres in Britain, the stages are situated behind a sort of arch (拱门), called the proscenium (幕布前的舞台部分)arch. The arch runs across the building with the stage on one side of it and the auditorium, housing the audience, on the other. The audience is kept to the area from which it can get a clear view of the stage. This type of theatre has been is use for three hundred years. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} The actor can ignore them until the end, when they applaud the performance. If an actor wants to speak to the audience he tends to step out of the picture, as it were—down to the edge of the stage.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Stage furniture or properties—"props", as they are referred to in the business – are now as few as possible. Elaborate scenery is used only when it is going to last throughout the play, or when it is so constructed that it can be changed quickly. Modern theatres are built with the stage extending far in front of the proscenium arch, if indeed they have a proscenium arch at all, electricity, already long in use, has recently had a revolutionary effect. A change of lighting is as good as a change of scenery, and simpler and quicker; it can light one part of the stage in place of another. Footlights have been found unnecessary. Curtains also are hardly necessary, since the stage can be darkened to signify the end of a scene.

    The modern idea of having the stage in front of the proscenium arch is not really modern, of course. It makes our stages much like Shakespeare's. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} The famous speeches of Hamlet, for instance, can be delivered more quietly and naturally than they were in the las century. The actors no longer have to worry much about not being heard, or about turning their backs to the auditorium. They can get closer to the audience, while a larger audience can see them at work.

    Moreover, nowadays, people are finding that modern theatres are built to sit in comfortably for two or three hours at a stretch. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} The result of these improvements is that, in spite of the high price of seats, perhaps more people than ever before are keen on theatre-going.

A. Over the last few decades, since the Second World War, theatrical customs have altered.

B. It makes people feel, as they watch a play or a show, that they are seeing a living and moving picture.

C. All these innovations have quickened up the pace of the drama.

D. This is an advantage both for actors and audience.

E. Today the theatres are much more comfortable because of the many improvements.

F. Often they can meet and eat in the restaurants attached to the theatres.