I was blind, but I was ashamed of it if it was known. I refused to use a white stick and hated asking for help. After all, I was a teenage girl, and I couldn't bear people to look at me and think I was not like them. I must have been a terrible danger on the roads. Coming across me wandering through the traffic, motorists probably would have to stop rapidly on their brakes. Apart from that, there were all sorts of disasters that used to occur on the way to and from work.

One evening, I got off the bus about halfway home where I had to change buses, and as usual I ran into something. "I'm awfully sorry," I said and stepped forward only to run into it again. When it happened a third time, I realized I had been apologizing to a lamppost. This was just one of the stupid things that constantly happened to me. So I carried on and found the bus stop, which was a request stop, where the bus wouldn't stop unless passengers wanted to get on or off. No one else was there and I had to guess if the bus had arrived.

    Generally in this situation, because I hated showing I was blind by asking for help, I tried to guess at the sound. Sometimes I would stop a big lorry and stand there feeling stupid as it drew away. In the end, I usually managed to swallow my pride and ask someone at the stop for help.

    But at this particular evening no one joined me at the stop; it seemed that everyone had suddenly decided not to travel by bus. Of course I heard plenty of buses pass, or I thought I did. But because I had given up stopping them for fear of making a fool of myself, I let them all go by. I stood there alone for half an hour without stopping one. Then I gave up. I decided to walk on to the next stop.

    I returned home the other night, tired. My husband asked me how my evening was, “Great.” I told him. I had spent 90 minutes in a gym with 10 Ping-Pong tables and all kinds of players, all playing a little ball over the net. By 9 pm, I was excited, tired, satisfied. I had beaten two young men half my age and lost battles against other competitors. To an observer, the night was common. To me, it was a lucky thing that I hadn't expected.

    I had taken up Ping-Pong during college, and in my 30s took more advanced lessons. However, a serious accident hurt my leg, which made me unable to take exercise. Months later, I tried to play Ping-Pong but my leg pained for a week. I put the game out of my mind.

When I was 53, one day my bad leg was working a little bit better. Could Ping-Pong be possible for me, now—in my condition, at my age? I tried to play Ping-Pong again

    Ping-Pong is a sport which requires endurance(耐力). Players need quick foot work and upper body movements to return balls, requiring faster response time than tennis.

    Playing Ping-Pong offers benefits for the brain. A study of 164 women aged 60 and older showed that Ping-Pong improved cognitive(认知)function more than dancing, walking or gymnastics. “The great thing about our sport is that it can be played by anyone,” said Jimmy Butler, a four-time national USA Table Tennis Association winner. “I see 90-year-olds and 10-year-olds.”

    Years passed and my endurance improved. People started to praise my shots. I won a game. Then I won agin. These days, I feel wonderful, I believe this sport is the fountain (源泉)of youth.

The First Hello

    The man from the telephone department got off the bus, and made his way to the tea stall, wiping the sweat off his head, face, then slipping his handkerchief under his shirt to wipe his neck and back. It was a year ago that the phone line had been installed, six months later men from the public works department had come to put up the phone booth—a neat box-like structure, with a glass window, and wooden ledges, yellow in colour. And days after that, a painter had taken an entire day to colour in broad, black brushstrokes, the words: STD Booth, local and STD allowed.

    No one could tell that the last word had been misspelled. Besides, he had taken the entire day. After he had a cup of tea, he left, waving cheerfully. And now months later, someone else was here again.

    Everyone watched the man as he sat on the bench. No one said a word, and soon the sound of him slurping his tea filled the hot afternoon. A few leaves fell, heavy in the heat, and sometimes a car passed, on its way to the main city farther away.

    When the man had finished, he tried to pay but the tea shop owner who sat behind his steaming kettle and the washed upturned cups, waved him away.

    “You are our guest here.”

    So the man took his handkerchief out again and wiped his face.

    They crowded around him as he shut himself up in the phone booth. When the children pressed their nose against the glass, he shooed them away, as he took out a shiny black soon changed to an excited yell as they saw him dial a number, pressing a finger into the ringed dialer of the phone and letting it go all the way in a half-circle. A while later, they hear him say into the mouthpiece, “Hello.”

    “Hello,”the children around the booth took up the cry, the teashop owner broke into a smile and the men waiting for a bus smiled and said hello to each other. The sadhu(印度的僧人)who sat under the banyan tree nodded wisely. As the sound carried, more hellos were heard. The women winnowing grain giggled as they tried the word tentatively, the shepherds feeding their flocks called out to their sheep, laughing as they used the word.

    “It's a big occasion, ”said the headman, in an awed(敬畏的) voice.

    “It is.” agreed those around him. The telephone man emerged and handed over a small chit of paper to the headman. “This is the telephone number.”

    The headman looked at it respectfully as if it were a mantra(符咒). The others around him read out the numbers slowly, digit-by-digit.

    The telephone man was now too tired to notice the cheering around him. He knew he had to wait long before the bus to take him back arrived. As he sipped his second cup of tea, he remembered something else.

    “Oh, you can't start using the phone now. The minister will come next month and inaugurate it. ”

    No one said a word. No one was surprise. They had waited so long; a month more did not really matter.

    The concept of good manners varies a lot when we compare different cultures, values and ways of living. However, when we talk about the western part of the world, the differences are not so big. In my opinion, going to a restaurant in Brazil will rarely be an embarrassing situation. But there are some basic and necessary rules of etiquette(礼节)that Brazilians usually respect every day. They are:

    ●Being on time is polite, but it is not a strict rule in Brazil. Being late for up to 15 minutes probably will not make a Brazilian angry.

    ●When you go to a restaurant, be careful to greet the people who work at the place, and don't forget to greet the people who are already waiting for you at the table. It's not necessary to hug or kiss everybody if they are already seated.

    ●You can ask somebody about how the food is prepared and also about prices or tips if you are not sure about them.

    ●Before they start eating, Brazilians usually say “born appetite” to their friend.

    ●You should never talk to another person while you still have some food in your mouth.

    ●Making noise while eating is also considered really rude. Avoid doing it.

    ●Be careful not to put your elbows on the table while eating. It is not terrible, but it can be considered a little bit rude by some people.

    ●Don't worry about the time. Usually people in Brazil stay seated for a long time, especially when they have interesting things to talk about.

    ●It's not necessary to talk in a really low voice because people there usually talk in a little loud voice. But please, don't exaggerate.

    ●Finally, saying “thank you” and “bye” are always seen in Brazil.

    Do you often feel like you want to wash your hands again and again? Or do you ever have the urge to line up the items on your desk? These all may be symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (强迫症), or OCD, which affects about 2 percent of the world's population.

    Those who suffer from OCD have difficulty finding successful treatment because doctors don't clearly understand its causes. But now, a new study has given hope for a future cure.

    For the study, which was published in the journal Nature in October, researchers observed humans, dogs and mice. They discovered four genes that may be responsible for obsessive-compulsive behaviors in humans.

    But why observe dogs and mice to learn about humans?

    "Dogs, it turns out, are surprisingly similar to people," study author and geneticist Elinor Karlsson, of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, US, told NPR. "They're chasing their own tail or chasing shadows like normal, but they're doing it for hours."

    In the study, researchers made a list of about 600 genes in mice, dogs and humans that they thought might cause OCD, reported NPR. They then compared those genes in two large groups of people – those who don't have OCD and those who do. In the end, they identified just four genes with mutations (突变) in the OCD group. The genes are active in a neurological pathway (神经通路) in the brain, which is believed to help control actions. But the mutations could block the neurological pathway.

    For example, for people without OCD, when they finish washing their hands, a signal will come, telling them to stop. But for people with OCD, the neurological pathway is blocked, so the message isn't getting through. As a result, the person will continue to wash their hands.

    "OCD and anxiety are kind of like learning disorders," Marcos Grados, an OCD researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told NPR. "Often with OCD, people have a fear of germs (细菌). You can't touch tables or door knobs (把手) and every time it's the same sensation (感觉). You didn't learn that the last time you touched a door knob, nothing happened. It's like touching it for the first time ever."

    However, that doesn't mean people who have these genetic mutations will always have obsessive-compulsive behaviors, the researchers said. That's because the disorder also relies on other things, such as one's environment.

    According to reports, various existing treatment methods have low success rates in patients. But now that we know where OCD comes from, let's hope we will soon find an effective way to treat it.

No poem should ever be discussed or analysed, until it has been read aloud by someone, teachers or students. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end. 

 All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling "interpretation(解释)" of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on films, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching cannot replace the student and the teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.

 I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than analysing it, if there isn't time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is a criticism of life, and a heightening(提升) of life. It is an approach to the truth of feeling, and it can save your life. It also deserves a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies. 

 I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don't like it should not be forced to put that dislike on anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.