In our daily life, it is necessary to make small talk in some situations. It helps to fill time between people when it is very quiet. You may not feel like talking with someone else or you are very shy at the beginning, but it is sometimes thought to be not polite to say nothing.

    People use small talk almost every day. It usually takes place when you meet someone you don't know at all or someone you're not familiar with. For example, waiters and hairdressers often make small talk with their customers（顾客）. If you happen to be outside when the postman comes to your door, you might make small talk with him, too.

    Most often, small talk happens in places where people are waiting for something. For example, you might talk with another person who is waiting for the bus to arrive. People also make small talk in a doctor's waiting room, or when they are waiting in a line to buy something. At the office, people make small talk in lunch rooms, especially if there is a line-up. Mingling is often required（要求）among people who don't know each other very well at a party. That is to say, they are expected to walk around and talk with others.

    The most common time for small talk to happen is the first time you see or meet someone on a given day. For example, if you see a neighbor in the waiting room of the airport you might say hello and discuss the sports or weather. However, the next time you see each other you might just smile and say nothing. If there is very little noise, it might be the right time to start a pleasant conversation. If someone is reading a book at the bus stop, it is probably not a good idea to start a conversation. Another good time to make small talk is during a break in a meeting when there is nothing important going on. However, it is important to recognize the signal when the other person wants the conversation to stop.

    Lawns（草坪）are some of the most common things in the world until you really start thinking about them. That's when you realize that they make no sense. Why do people keep these uninteresting, pointless little plants outside their homes? They're not beautiful like flowers, they don't provide food and you have to take care of them constantly.

    Israeli bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari thought these deeds were weird too. He looked into their history and ended up with an interesting story.

    No one considered putting patches of grass outside their homes in ancient times. That changed in the Middle Ages, when French and English kings and nobles started putting patches of grass at their castle entrances.

    “Well-kept lawns demand land and a lot of work,” wrote Harari in his book. “In exchange, they produce nothing of value.” Peasants could never afford to waste their time or land on lawns, so these lawns were a perfect status symbol（身份的象征）for nobility（高贵）.

    When the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th and 19th centuries, the middle classes started being able to afford their own suburban（郊区的）houses. And guess what became the suburban status symbol? A perfectly kept lawn.

    The popularity of lawns continued to grow, taking over public event spaces and sports. In the past, people played sports on all kinds of surfaces—dirt, ice, sand. But in the last couple centuries, they made the switch to green grass.

    “Grass is nowadays the most widespread crop in the USA after corn and wheat,” Harari continued. Lawns spread beyond Europe and the U.S, and they're now status symbols around the world.

    Suburban people may not realize it, but they care for lawns just because centuries ago, French and English kings wanted to show off by intentionally planting something useless. It's strange that people should continue to spend so much time and money on what's really a leftover（遗留物）from the Middle Ages. When you plan your house, you can shake off（摆脱）the cultural leftover and imagine for yourself a rock garden or some other new creation.

    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 (戏谑的引语) 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 having made a mistake. They naturally look for someone else who could be responsible 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, 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 mark of great maturity.

    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 (直接推论) to that: if a good excuse is “good” even if it isn't honest, then where is the place of the truth?

    The English language has a lot of words which can be used in many different ways and in many different expressions.

    One such example is the word matter. In fact, matter can mean just about anything. It could be one of the most useful words in the English language.

    Let's get to the heart of the matter—a matter of principle (原则).

    If someone says that you owe (欠) him $50, but you don't, a friend might say, "Well, you could pay him the $50. It's not that much money. Then you won't have to hear him say it anymore." But if you do not owe him the money, do not pay him the money. It's a matter of principle.

    There is another way to use the word matter. But be careful with your choice of words.

    If you ask someone, "What's the matter?" it shows you are worried about the other person. But saying, "What's the matter with you?" has a completely different meaning. And it usually sounds rude (粗鲁的). In fact, when you say, "What's the matter with you?" you are suggesting that the person did something wrong or stupid.

    Another expression that could sound rude is to say, "It doesn't matter to me." Here, it depends on the context, and how you say it.

    Let's say you tell someone that a friend just got a big raise at work. That person answers with, "It doesn't matter to me." Here, it means he or she does not care. And it sounds rude.

    But saying, "Oh, you pick where we eat dinner. It doesn't matter to me." does not sound rude. In this situation, "it doesn't matter" shows you are easy-going (随和的).

    No matter how you look at it and what you say, matter is a very useful word. And it's only a matter of time before you will become an expert on the use of matter.

    Finland is the happiest place on Earth, according to the 2018 World Happiness Report of 156 nations.

    The report, released Wednesday by the United Nations'Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranks the countries of the world based on six different categories of well-being: income, freedom, trust, life expectancy, generosity and social support. This year's report also pays special attention to the happiness of each country's immigrants.

    The U.S. dropped four spots from 2017 and landed in 18th place, and last year's winner, Norway, came in second place — followed by Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland.

    “The top five countries all have almost equally high values for the six factors found to support happiness, and four of these countries—Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland — have been in first place in the six World Happiness Report rankings since the first report" in 2012, "co-editor John Helliwell told CNN. “In a division with such excellent teams, changes in the top spot are to be expected."

    Rounding out the top 10 happiest countries was Canada in sixth place, then New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. The order of the top 10 nations changed from the 2017 list but the countries did not, according to the report. They were also 10 of the 11 top spots in the immigrant happiness category (including Mexico — 24th overall, but 10th in immigration).

    "The most striking finding of the report is the remarkable consistency between the happiness of immigrants and the locally born," Helliwell said in a statement. "Although immigrants come from countries with very different levels of happiness, their reported life evaluations resemble those of other residents in their new countries. Those who move to happier countries gain, while those who move to less happy countries lose."

    Other major world powers placed in significantly low spots on the list. Germany came in 15th, the UK was 19th — followed by Japan in 54th place, Russia in 59th and China in 86th.

    The report, based on surveys completed by citizen volunteers, came just under a week before World Happiness Day on March 20, when the UN declared to recognize "the relevance of happiness and well-being as universal goals and aspirations in the lives of human beings around the world and the importance of their recognition in public policy objectives"

I stood outside my front door catching my breath. After a lazy Christmas holiday, I had to recover from climbing stairs with carry-on bags and a suitcase. I looked up — Red tape crossed the door. I didn't understand French, but the one English word said enough, "POLICE". Google Translate told me I would be caught if I entered, so I didn't.

Finally, I called my rental agent (收租人). He went to the police station for more details. The thief had taken a few items from the top drawer as well as a small amount of money in the bottom drawer. Not only were my files undisturbed, but so were the TV and printer. My agent also said something about fixing the locks tomorrow and making a list for the police.

Then one day, I remembered that I had left another jewelry box in the flat. My heart sank as I thought of a gold locket (项链坠) with a picture of my late Grandma inside. When I realized the box was missing, the whole experience seemed to crash down on me. I cried. At the end of January, I received a letter from the police. The thief hadn't been found, and the case was closed. I slept with my purse by my bed. I hid my laptop when I showered. And then another challenge came — I was unexpectedly fired by my company.

One July night, I reached into my third drawer to pull out my jean shorts. I heard something fall to the ground. I looked down: It was the tiny jewelry box I thought had been stolen six months earlier. Inside was the locket with honey Grandma smiling at me, being there for me, telling me not to give up. I started to cry. I knew that things were going to be OK.