Happy,angry,amazed—these are some of the emotions we like to express these days when we're sending a message on our smartphones.That's a quick way of telling someone how we're feeling.Yes,emojis have become a vital tool for communication.

    The emoji was first invented in Japan in the late 1990s and the word "emoji" comes from the Japanese words for "picture" and "character".The number of different images has dramatically increased since then and now we have a picture for every mood or situation.

    So now we are giving this new creation the visual "thumbs-up" but have you thought why we've become so addicted to using emojis? Professor Vyv Evans has written a book called The Emoji Code, saying "increasingly, what we're finding is that digital communication is taking over certain aspects of face-to-face interaction...one of the reasons why emojis are so popular is that they really do enable us to express our emotional selves more effectively."

    Another advantage of emojis is that they are an international language—they don't use words but some pictures so they can be easily interpreted whatever your native language is. However, the emojis can sometimes be misinterpreted—if a friend sends you an emoji of a hammer, you may think he/she is angry when really he/she is saying he/she is clumsy!

    Emojis are a good way for showing similar feelings. But as linguist(语言学家) Neil Cohn says, "To many, emojis are an exciting evolution of the way we communicate, but to others, they are a linguistic Armageddon（大决战）."It does show there is a lot more to our communication than words alone but does this mean the decline in traditional writing?

    When one of your car tires goes flat, there are two things you can do, you can complain and change it or, if you don't have a spare, stand helplessly beside the road and hope someone comes to your rescue. Now comes a third choice, called Quickwheel. It is designed to get disabled motorists rolling again as quickly as possible.

Quickwheel is basically a tiny emergency trailer—complete with three tough little wheels of its own-- that supports the flat tire and enables the motorists to drive to a service station without losing much time or expending much energy. The product is made in the US. Company, Quickwheel Inc. of Greenwich, Connecticut. According to the firm's president, Robert Bockweg, the product meets each of the major worries that customers relate with flat tires: safe, lost time and physical labor.

    To use it, motorists simply unfold the product to its fully extended position, set it in front of the disabled tire, drive the car onto the Quickwheel's ramp (斜板) and fix a special safety strap over the tire. The tire is then locked in Quickwheel's metal frame. Its three wheels do the rest of the work. According to Quickwheel Inc, its product can be driven “for miles” at the speed of up to 45 miles per hour “without any noticeable change in the vehicle's braking or steering operation”. The company also says that it can be used on just about any type of car, jeep, mini-van or trailer. (拖车)

    Bockweg says that Quickwheel will be sold first in the United States, at a price of 150 dollars. Sales agreements now being talked over should make the product ready for use in Japan, Canada and Western Europe in the near future.

    Booking

    The majority of event tickets are on sale from Bath Box Office.

    Online: www. bathboxoffice.org.uk

    By email: boxoflfice@bathfesicals.org.uk

    By telephone: +44(0)1225 463362 (Monday to Friday)

    In person: Bath Box Office, Bath Visitor Information Centre, Abbey Chambers.

    Opening times: Monday-Saturday 10:30am to 5pm (Closed on Sunday)

    Tickets not on sale at Bath Box Office are indicated on our website and also in the programme.

    Travel information

    Bath will be very crowded on Saturdays，so we recommend that you start earlier for your journey considering the busy traffic.

    Find out about travelling to Bath by car，train, coach and plane. The main train station is Bath Spa, the closest airport is Bristol, and there is quite a lot of parking but it fills up quickly. National Express has coaches to and from Bath.

    Parking

    The closest car park to the Assembly Rooms (the starting point for the Promenade) is located in Charlotte Street, which is divided into several sections. Parking in the top section means the shortest walk to the start in the Assembly Rooms.

    Park and Ride will be very busy on Saturdays with visitors to the city. Please allow plenty of time to park and catch the bus, and we suggest at least one hour from parking the car to getting into the city center plus walking time from the bus stop to the Assembly Rooms.

    Accessibility

    For accessibility, please see the list. Most places are a least partly accessible. If using a wheelchair, please advise the Box office so that suitable arrangements can be made for your comfort.

    Next time you hear a funny joke you'd better not laugh too hard. According to a paper published by the British Medical Journal, laughter isn't always the best medicine. Sometimes it can even be harmful. Professor Robin Ferner from the University of Birmingham, one of the authors of the study, found that bad things could happen to people who laughed too much. He says, "We found people with heartbeat problems which had stopped their hearts, we found people who had fainted(昏倒), and we found people who'd dislocated their jaws or burst their lungs."

    It seems that laughing can be no laughing matter. But it's not all doom and gloom. Professor Ferner says there are benefits to laughing when you want to lose weight, for example. Yes, that's right: laugh and be slimmer! Professor Ferner explains that: "You use energy when you laugh, you move your diaphragm(横隔膜), you expand your lungs, and both those things can be helpful."

    According to the research, laughing for a quarter of an hour can burn 40 calories, and if you laughed all day you'd use about 2, 000 calories, which is what most people consume in a day. But don't do that or you might end up with a painful jaw. Ouch! Or you might find people looking at you in a funny way.

    But I don't want to finish this article leaving you feeling desperate. Laughter comes naturally for most of us. Babies begin to laugh at around 3-6 months. So give in to your sense of humour and keep smiling. Life is short anyway.

    A few weeks ago, I called an Uber to take me to the Boston airport for a flight home for the holidays. As I slid into the back seat of the car, the warm intonations(语调) of the driver's accent washed over me in a familiar way.

    I learned that he was a recent West African immigrant with a few young children, working hard to provide for his family. I could relate: I am the daughter of two Ethiopian immigrants who made their share of sacrifices to ensure my success. I told him I was on a college break and headed home to visit my parents. That's how he found out I go to Harvard. An approving eye glinted at me in the rearview window, and quickly, we crossed the boundaries of rider and driver. I became his daughter, all grown up — the product of his sacrifice.

    And then came the fateful question: "What do you study?" I answered "history and literature" and the pride in his voice faded, as I knew it might. I didn't even get to add "and African-American studies" before he cut in, his voice thick with disappointment, "All that work to get into Harvard, and you study history?"

    Here I was, his daughter, squandering the biggest opportunity of her life. He went on to deliver the age-old lecture that all immigrant kids know. We are to become doctors (or lawyers, if our parents are being generous) — to make money and send money back home. The unspoken demand, made across generations, which my Uber driver laid out plainly, is simple: Fulfill your role in the narrative(故事) of upward mobility so your children can do the same.

    I used to feel anxious and backed into a corner by the questioning, but now as a junior in college, I'm grateful for their support more than anything. This holiday season, I've promised myself I won't huff and get annoyed at their inquiries. I won't defensively respond with "but I plan to go to law school!" when I get unrequested advice. I'll just smile and nod, and enjoy the warmth of the occasion.

    I was now in my twenty-third year of residence in this island and was so naturalized to the place and to the manner of living that I finally enjoyed the certainty that no savagesc(野人) would come to the place to disturb me, and that I could have been content to spend the rest of my time there, even to the last moment, till I had laid me down and died, like the old goat in the cave.

    I had also arrived to some little recreations and amusements, which made the time pass more pleasantly with me a great deal than it did before.

    At first, I had taught my Poll to speak. And he did it so familiarly and talked so clearly and plainly that it was very pleasant to me. And he lived with me no less than six years. How long he might live afterwards, I don't know; though I know people have an idea in Brazil that they live a hundred years. Perhaps poor Poll may be alive there still, calling Poor Robin Crusoe to this day. I wish no other English man the ill luck to come there and hear him. But if he did, he would certainly believe it was the devil.

    My dog was a very pleasant and loving companion to me, for no less than sixteen years of my time, and then died of mere old age.

    As for my cats, they multiplied to that degree that I had to shoot several of them at first to keep them from eating up all I had.

    Besides these, I had two more parrots which talked pretty well and would all call Robin Crusoe, but neither like my first. Nor indeed did I take the pains with any of them that I had done with him. I had also several tame sea-fowls, whose names I don't know, who I caught upon the shore and cut their wings and the little stakes which I had planted before my castle wall being now grown up to a good thick bush; these fowls all lived among these low trees and bred there, which was very agreeable to me; so that as I said above, I began to be very well contented with the life I led, if it might have been secured from the threat of the savages.