Living and dealing with kids can be a tough job these days, but living and dealing with parents can be even tougher.

    If I have learned anything in my 16 years, it is that communication is very important, both when you disagree and when you get along. With any relationship, you need to let other person know how you are feeling. If you are not able to communicate, you drift apart. When you are mad at your parents, or anyone else, not talking to them doesn't solve anything.

    Communication begins with the concerns of another. It means that you can't just come home from school, go up to your room and ignore everyone. Even if you just say “Hi”, and see how their day was for five minutes, it is better than nothing.

    If you looked up the word “communication” in a dictionary, it would say “the exchange of ideas, the conveyance (表达) of information, means of communication such as a letter or a message”. To keep a good relationship, you must keep communication strong. Let people know how you feel, even if it's just by writing a note.

    When dealing with parents, you always have to make them feel good about how they are doing as a parent. If you are trying to make them see something as you see it, tell them that you'll listen to what they have to say, but ask them politely to listen to you. Yelling or walking away only makes the situation worse.

    This is an example: one night, Sophie went to a street party with her friends. She knew she had to be home by midnight after the fireworks, but she didn't feel she could just ask to go home. That would be rude. After all, they had been nice enough to take her along with them. Needless to say, she was late getting home. Her parents were mad at first, but when Sophie explained why she was late, they weren't as mad and let the incident go. Communication is the key factor here. If Sophie's parents had not been willing to listen, Sophie would have been in a lot of trouble.

    Communication isn't a one-way deal: it goes both ways. Just remember: if you get into a situation like Sophie's, tell the other person how you feel—listening is the key factor to communication.

    The best festivals in Europe

    Whether they're in the countryside or a post-industrial landscape, Europe's yearly festival calendar means new events, old favourites, crazy people and great charm.

    OFF Festival, Poland

    A small festival in Katowice in south-west Poland, OFF has, over the past 10 years, built an international audience thanks to a challenging and interesting mix of acts. This year's selection focuses on female artists: singer-songwriters Feist and PJ Harvey headline, while Swedish pop singer Anna von Hausswolff and classical composer turned electronic producer Anna Meredith are also on the bill. Meanwhile, the experimental poetry and performance project by Moor Mother will undoubtedly be an unmissable show.

    ·4~6 August, ￡55, off-festival.pl

    Melt, Germany

    What would Melt be without its “sleepless stage”--a non-stop music marathon that runs from Saturday morning to midday on Monday? The German festival for those who love an all-hours party takes place in Ferropolis, Gra fenhainichen. This year, the festival celebrates its 20th anniversary, bringing 20,000 people together. A party train from Cologne also serves as your weekend accommodation! A worthy summer alternative to a party weekend in Berlin.

    ·￡140,14~16 July, melt festival.de

    Primavera Sound, Portugal and Spain

    A festival that has rapidly grown to attract visitors from across Europe with its electronic music, guitar-led acts and plenty of sunshine, Primavera Sound takes place in Barcelona and, since 2012, also in Porto, under the name NOS Primavera Sound. The Barcelona edition takes place across six days with an abundance of DJs on call to keep people dancing, while the smaller, three-day Porto festival has Bicep, Nicholas Jaar and Richie Hawtin, who will be doing a closing on the Friday night.

    ·Barcelona 31 May~4 June, ￡195; Porto 8~10 June, ￡110, primaverasound.com

    Program fools humans

    Have you ever been so bored that you started a conversation with a “chatbot (聊天机器人)”? You probably discovered quickly that it wasn't much fun, because the things it says hardly ever make any sense and chatting with it doesn't provide the same kind of back-and-forth as a human conversation.

    That might have made you wonder: will a computer ever be able to talk like a human?

    That day is certainly getting closer now. A computer program named “Eugene Goostman” has successfully passed the Turing test – by fooling people into thinking it was a 13-year-old boy, reported AFP on June 9.

    While you may have never heard of the Turing test, it means a lot in the world of artificial (人工的) intelligence.

    According to USA Today, the test was first invented in 1950 by Alan Turing, a British computer expert best known for his code-breaking work during World War II. In his test, a group of human judges take turns having keyboard conversations for five minutes with two subjects – a human and a piece of computer software. If up to 30 percent of the judges fail to tell the two apart, the program is considered to have passed the test.

“If a machine is indistinguishable (无法区分的) from a human, then it could be said to be ‘thinking',” wrote Turing in his paper Computing, Machinery & Intelligence back in 1950.

    No computer had ever passed the Turing test before. But this time, Eugene Goostman, developed by two Russian scientists to simulate (模拟) a 13-year-old boy, managed to convince 33 percent of judges that it was human.

    Machines are close to “reaching the milestone of communicating with us in a way that we are comfortable with”, Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading, UK, told The Telegraph. “This brings closer the time in which robots start to play an active role in our daily lives.”

    Some people feel a bit disturbed by the news. They worry that computers will outsmart humans in the near future and take over the world. But Warwick said that it is unlikely that this will happen any time soon. After all, computers have only just learned to have a five-minute conversation, while we humans can do so much more than that.

    In early November of 1942, my geology (地质学)class was supposed to go on a field trip to see the mica mine (云母矿). Although it rained, everyone showed up on time. I was the only girl in the class. We all fit into two cars.

    Near Deary, Mr. Tier, our teacher, went into a store to ask about the direction, while townsmen looked at us with curiosity. On the store owner's advice, we drove out into the hills for a few miles. Then we left the cars. We were afraid they would get stuck in the mud.

    Eventually, we located the mine near the top of the mountain. There was a very small hole, running about two or three hundred feet into the mountainside. The passage (通道) was so narrow that we could touch both sides with our hands, and not tall enough to allow us to stand up straight. The first boy held the torch; we took hold of the backs of each other's coats, in a line, and followed him in, ducking our heads. After getting in, we were disappointed because it was not the mine our teacher was looking for.

    The rain was coming down hard as we started back to the cars to go home. Back at Deary, we went into a drugstore and stood around its big heating stove to dry out. The clerk was a middle­aged lady. Seeing our entirely wet hair and clothes, she handed each of us a cup of hot water immediately and asked if there was anything wrong with any of us.

    Hiking eight miles in the rain had not reduced our interest at all. We all felt we had had a wonderful time, even if we didn't find the mine.

    Last Thursday, Michael and Linda stood behind large food trucks distributing meals to 4,000 homeless people for their wedding reception on the border town of Kilis. The couple had decided that instead of hosting their friends and family for a traditional feast reception, they would feed the victims from an earthquake-stricken area.

    The idea came from the bridegroom's father, Ted, who volunteers for a Turkish relief organization. For the past few years, the organization has distributed daily meals to thousands of people who have suffered from natural disasters. He approached a representative of the organization and suggested that the family cover part of the costs of feeding them for the day.

    Then he told his son, who was surprised by the suggestion, but soon won over. When he told that to the bride, she was really shocked but finally accepted because in southeastern Turkey there is a real culture of sharing with people in need. They love to share their food, their table and everything they have. And afterwards she was quite amazed about it. So, they arrived at the distribution center on Thursday to spend the day serving food and taking photographs with their grateful recipients(接受者).

    On Tuesday evening, the newly married couple were still pleased with their decision to quit a personal celebration for one with a greater good. "It's like sharing a dinner with your friends and family who have this kind of thing on a daily basis or sharing something with people who don't even have the most basic things," Michael said. "Hopefully, this will also give the start for other wedding dinners to be held here with our brothers and sisters in need."

Standing on the South Pole at the start of the year with the wind blowing across the Antarctic, travel blogger Johnny Ward felt a wave of relief.

Just a week before, in early January 2024, he'd struggled through snow and ice to climb to the top of the Vinson Massif, Antarctica's highest peak. Years before, in 2017, he'd become the first Irish person to visit every country in the world.

Now, after decades of traveling and mountaineering, Ward could claim another world first—the Ultimate Explorer's Grand Slam (大满贯), which involves reaching the highest peak on every continent, and visiting both the North and South Poles in addition to visiting every country.

"I feel relieved," Ward recalled as he slowly made his way back to his home in Thailand after climbing to the top of the Vinson Massif and then setting foot on the South Pole. "But also I'm aware I'm a normal guy, not a world-class athlete, so I guess it was more about resilience and determination more than any ability. Although I met with lots of barriers, I overcame them one by one."

Ward had previously devoted a decade of his life, between 2007 and 2017, to visiting every country in the world. The incredible journey saw him hitchhike (搭便车) a ride on a container ship from Oman to Socotra in Yemen, travel overland from Cairo to Cape Town and travel from South Korea to Australia by bus and boat.

"It had been a huge life goal, over a decade of my life, and then when I finished that I was aimless and had no idea what to do next," he said. "I started eating badly, drinking too much, putting on weight and I ignored my business."

Ward decided that the best way to overcome this was to challenge himself again. He began running ultramarathons (超级马拉松) and climbing mountains, and soon found that with extreme purpose and direction, he was back to loving life again.

So where will Ward go next? Space? The bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of the ocean? "All good things come after suffering, and I want to share that with people. So that's the next plan," he said.