City Life in Thailand is much like city life in the United States. People live in tall buildings or in houses close together. But outside the cities, life is different. People usually live on farms far apart from one another. They grow their own food or buy fresh food almost every day at the market. But the market is not in a building. It is a floating market located on a river.

    Lamai and her family live on a farm. They grow fruits and vegetables and sell them at the market each day. Long before the sun comes up, Lamai and her brother help their parents. They pick out fruits and vegetables and clean them. Then they load everything into a long boat.

    Their boat is ready by about 6:00 a.m. Lamai and her mother row to the closest floating market. On the way the water is still and peaceful. Lamai sees the bright sun beginning to shine.

    Soon Lamai hears laughing and yelling in the distance. Her mother rows the boat around a corner. Suddenly they are at the floating market. Hundreds of boats are gathered at a wide place in the river. Lamai's mother is selling bananas and ripe tomatoes today. For Lamai a trip to the market is more than just a chance to sell or buy something. It is a chance for her to talk to her friends.

    Today Lamai sees her friend Suki. He is helping his mother prepare meals in their boat. Lamai loves the smell of the fried bananas Suki's mother is making. Lamai's mother rows over to buy a late breakfast. As Lamai eats, she and Suki talk about their summer plans.

    At around 11:00 a.m. people begin to go home. She is sleepy from waking up so early. Her mother has sold most of what they brought to the market. The will leave the market with less food in their boat but with more money for Lamai's family.

    Apple announced its new iPhones last week, but competitors' mobile phones can do many of the same things for less money.

    The new iPhone 8 and X have wireless charging, edge-to-edge glass screen and double cameras. But all of these features are already available in smart phones from China's Huawei and Oppo, and Korea's Samsung. While Apple asks buyers to pay $1,000 for its high-end model, some Asian phone makers can offer similar features for less.

    At one time, Chinese manufacturers copied features and designs from others to produce low-cost phones. But they have now added high-end features to their phones and they control nearly half the global mobile phone market.

    Media MarktSaturn is Europe's biggest electronics seller. A spokesperson for the store told Reuters that,“Huawei is seen as a relevant competitor to Apple and Samsung by covering all major price points and placing big investments in marketing and sales. '' She also said that the Chinese companies Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and TCL were among the top-10 best-selling smart phones in its stores.

    Chinese manufacturers' fast growth has been fueled by strong sales in China. But they now export 40 percent of their smart phones. That is almost double the number from just three years ago, according to the Hong Kong investment company CLSA.

    Huawei is currently the world's third largest phone maker behind Samsung and Apple. According to research company Canalys, the Chinese company is getting closer to second-place Apple and might overtake it later this year.The Chinese company even made fun of Apple's new facial recognition feature with a Facebook video called "Real AI phone." Huawei plans to show its top-of-the-line Mate 10 phone on Oct. 16. The phone will have artificial intelligence features such as instant translation and image recognition and will cost less than $1,000.    Other Chinese companies are looking to enter the high-end smart phone market.

    Memory, they say, is a matter of practice and exercise. If you have the wish and really make a conscious(自觉的) effort, then you can quite easily improve your ability to remember things. But even if you are successful, there are times when your memory seems to play tricks on you.

    Sometimes you remember things that really did not happen. One morning last week, for example, I got up and found that I had left the front door unlocked all night, yet I clearly remember locking it carefully the night before.

    Memory “tricks” work the other way as well. Once in a while you remember not doing something, and then find out that you did. One day last month, for example, I was sitting in a barber(理发师) shop waiting for my turn to get a haircut, and suddenly I realized that I had got a haircut two days before at the barber shop across the street from my office.

    We always seem to find something funny and amusing in incidents caused by people's forgetfulness or absent-mindedness. Stories about absent-minded professors have been told for years, and we never get tired of hearing new ones. Unfortunately, however, absent-mindedness is not always funny. There are times when “tricks” of our memory can cause us great trouble.

The Truth About the Environment

    For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out, that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat, that species are becoming disappeared in huge numbers, and that the planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

    But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world's population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming disappeared, only about 0.7% of them are dying out in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been best cured not by limiting economic growth, but by accelerating it.

    Yet public opinion surveys suggest that many people hold the belief that environmental standards are declining and four factors seem to cause this gap between what they know and what the reality is.

    One is the unbalanced budget for scientific research. Scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise policy, but it will also create an impression that many more potential problems exist than is the case.

    Secondly, environmental groups need to be noticed by the mass media. They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes overstate their arguments. In 1997, for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature issued a press release entitled: „Two thirds of the world's forests lost forever'. The truth turns out to be nearer 20%.

    A third source of confusion is the attitude of the media. People are extremely more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants: That, however, can lead to significant misunderstanding. An example was that America came across EI Nino(厄尔尼诺) in 1997 and 1998. This climatic phenomenon was accused of breaking tourism, causing allergies, melting the ski-slopes, and causing 22 deaths. However, according to an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the damage was estimated at $4 billion but the benefits amounted to some $19 billion.

    The fourth factor is poor individual knowledge. People worry that the endless rise in the amount of things everyone throws away will cause the world to run out of places to dispose of waste. Yet, even if America's trash output continues to rise as it has done in the past, and even if the American population doubles by 2100, all the rubbish America produces through the entire 21st century will still take up only one 12,000th of the area of the entire United States.

    It is extremely important that we look at the facts if we want to make the best possible decisions for the future. It may be costly to be overly optimistic, but more costly still to be too pessimistic.

    Facebook was running my life.

    But what killed Facebook for me was when I posted a photo, and five minutes later my son asked me how many "likes" it had got. His question was a wake-up call.

    "Likes" are signs of acceptance and approval(赞同). I had forgotten that acceptance and approval need to come from within and had unknowingly set him a bad example.

    Before absorbed in Facebook, I spent a lot more time reading books and magazines. I checked in with friends through texts, emails and phone calls.

    To set a healthier example to my son, I deactivated my Facebook account.

    I'd been in the habit of checking Facebook many times a day, so I had to come up with some new habits. I carried a novel and a crossword puzzle book around with me. I rediscovered knitting. I started taking yoga classes.

    I started to remember a few things. My body is fine just the way it is. I have friends who will help me out when I'm in trouble, and I will help them out. I do my best to be a good mother, and our son is happy and healthy. We are very lucky to be able to afford two vacations a year.

    I stopped looking at the world through my cellphone. I felt completely present in the moment. The break left me feeling better about myself, my family, my home and my life.

    After a few weeks, I returned to Facebook. Now I look at the photos of my friends' kids growing up and treasure how social media allows me to keep in touch with family. I no longer have the desire to post updates often.

    It is not an addiction(上瘾) any more.