Alice Brown lives in New York with her mum and dad and two brothers, Tony and Peter. It is Alice's fourteen birthday next week. The family has got two dogs, a cat and four rabbits. Alice likes cats and rabbits but her brothers like dogs. Alice's dad works in a hotel. He's a hotel manager. Her mum teaches English at a junior high school.

    Alice and her brothers study at the same school, but they are in different grades. She's in Grade Seven. Her brother Tony is in Grade Ten and Peter is in Grade Six. They live in a flat near the school. They walk to school together every day.

    Alice is interested in computers. At home she plays computer games in her free time.

    Peter Owen has been making wigs (假发) since the 1980s. He has made wigs for the stars of more than seventy movies, including Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Johnny Depp in Sleepy Hollow, and Nicole Kidman in The Others. One of his biggest jobs so far has been designing the hair and make-up(化妆) for the three Lord of the Rings movies. He had just six weeks to design and make more than a hundred wigs, each one a different style, colour, shape and length.

    The hair and make-up in a movie are just as important as the costumes(戏装) or the sets. Over the years, Peter has made actors look older, younger, healthy and sick. For one movie he even made a female actor look like a man!“What people don't realize about wigs is that we are not always making people more beautiful,” he says. “Often we are covering up beauty and making them look ordinary.”

    All Peter's wigs are hand-made using human hair, so they look as real as possible. This also makes them very expensive―between US$4,500 and US$12,500 each! He knows he's done a good job when people don't realize the star of the movie is wearing a wig. So he was pleased when one newspaper said that Nicole Kidman had dyed（染色） her hair dark brown for a movie. “It was a wig and no one knew that,” he says.

    A businessman was once deep in debt（债务）and could see no way out. He sat on a park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company.

    Suddenly an old man appeared in front of him. “I can see that something is troubling you,” he said. After listening to the businessman's trouble, the old man said, “I believe I can help you.”

    He asked the man his name, wrote out a check（支票）and pushed it into his hand, saying, “Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time.” Then he turned and disappeared.

    The businessman saw his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller. One of the richest man in the world.

    “It can solve my problem at once!” the businessman realized. But instead, he decided to put the check in his safe. Just knowing it was there that might give him the strength（力量）to work out a way to save his business, he thought.

    With renewed optimism（乐观精神）, he did better in his business. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

    Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the check. At the agreed-upon（约定的）time, the old man appeared. But just as the businessman was about to hand back the check and share his successful story, a nurse came running up and caught the old man.

    “I'm so glad I caught him!” she cried. “I hope he hasn't been troubling you. He's always escaping from the hospital and telling people he's John D. Rockefeller.”

    And then she led the old man away by the arm. The businessman just stood there,________. Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence（自信心）that gave him the strength to achieve anything he went after.

    Life is colorful. However, life sometimes plays jokes on us, especially when one has a bad day. Ryu is an unlucky one.

    Ryu got up late in the morning. He set the alarm clock at 8:00 a.m. the night before because he had a job interview at a company today. But the alarm clock didn't ring. How strange!

    Then Ryu sat at the kitchen table where his breakfast usually was, but it wasn't there. Instead, he found a note left by his sister, "I am really busy today. Make breakfast yourself." So Ryu had a quick breakfast of bread and milk. Then he rode his bicycle to the company for the interview.

    When Ryu arrived, he was scolded(责骂) by the angry boss(老板) for being five minutes late. But he still got the job after the interview. Also, he was told to get to work at 9:00 a.m. the next day. That night Ryu went to bed earlier at 11:00 p.m., in order not to be late the next day.

    The next morning, Ryu's sister woke him up at 8:00 a.m. But he wanted to stay in bed for five more minutes. He finally had to get up when the sunlight shone down on his eyes. He did everything like any other normal day. When he finished his breakfast, he found it was already 9:05 a.m. He was late again.