Thirteen can be a challenging age. Not only did I have to adapt to my changing body, I also had to deal with my parents' bitter divorce, a new family and the upsetting move from my country home to a crowed town.

    When we moved, my beloved companion (伙伴), a small brown horse, had to be sold. I was heartbroken and terribly lonely. I couldn't eat or sleep and cried all the time. Finally, realizing how much I missed my horse, my father bought me another horse, Cowboy.

Cowboy was without doubt the ugliest horse in the world. But I didn't care. I love him beyond all reasons.

    I joined a riding club. When Cowboy and I entered the events where the horse was judged by the appearance, we were quickly “shown the gate”. I knew nothing could turn Cowboy into a beauty. My only chance to compete would be in the timed speed events. I chose the jumping race.

    For the whole next month we practiced running and jumping for hours in the hot sun and then I would walk Cowboy home, totally exhausted.

    All of our hard work didn't make me feel confident by the time the show came. One girl named Becky rode a big brown horse in the race events. She always won the blue ribbons (丝带). I sat at the gate and sweated all out while I watched Becky and her horse charge through the court and finish in first place.

    My turn finally came. At the signal, we dashed (猛冲) towards the first fence, jumped over it without trouble and raced on to the next one. Cowboy then flew over the second, third and fourth fences like a bird and I turned him towards the finish line.

    No cheers filled the air. The end of our run was met with surprised silence. Cowboy and I had beaten Becky and her fancy horse by two seconds.

    I gained much more than a blue ribbon that day. At thirteen, I realized that no matter what the chances would be, I'd always be a winner if I wanted something badly enough and worked for it. I can be the owner of my fate.

    I wasn't surprised when I read that actress Helen Hunt recently stated that she would never allow her young daughter to become a child star. Ms. Hunt is the daughter of a Hollywood technical director, and grew up in Hollywood. Now in her late 40s, she started acting and modeling when she was eight and has probably seen a lot over those years in show business.

    She has had a successful career. She earned four Golden Globes and four Emmys. She also attained the top honor of her profession when she won the Best Actress Academy Award for her role in the 1992 movie, As Good As It Gets. Given those accolades, Ms. Hunt is successful. There is no doubt that her early experiences as a child star prepared her for what has been an outstanding adult career. Given those achievements, why would this star declare she'll never allow her daughter, now at the age of six, to follow in her footsteps?

    Everyone familiar with the entertainment scene is aware of the reasons for her attitude. Recent tabloid (小报) news headlines featuring the troubles of former child stars, among them Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and the late Gary Coleman, may answer the question. Although Ms. Hunt managed to become a successful grown-up star, she apparently believes she's an exception.

    What Ms. Hunt may be suggesting is that many very young stars go through unnatural childhoods on movie and TV sets. While they're earning big incomes, they're so pampered (纵容) by directors and praised by fans; they may get false impressions that their lives will always be that way. Then, within a few years, when faced with reality, they're hurt and confused. After all the overwhelming affection, they find they can't deal with the problems. That's often when drugs and alcohol take over their lives.

    Helen Hunt has some other reasons why she doesn't want her daughter to be in the entertainment business. Many child stars can never make a successful transition to meaningful adulthood. However, as with many Hollywood movies, I believe there are both good and bad scenes about how it can be played out in real life.

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    We've all been there: in a lift, in line at the bank or on airplane, surrounded by people who are, like us, deeply focused on their smartphones or, worse, struggling with the uncomfortable silence.

    What's the problem? It's possible that we all have compromised conversational intelligence. It's more likely that none of us start a conversation because it's awkward and challenging, or we think it's annoying and unnecessary. But the next time you find yourself among strangers, consider that small talk is worth the trouble. Experts say it's an invaluable social practice that results in big benefits.

    Dismissing small talk as unimportant is easy, but we can't forget that deep relationships wouldn't even exist if it weren't for casual conversation. Small talk is the grease (润滑剂) for social communication, says Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. "Almost every great love story and each big business deal begins with small talk," he explains. "The key to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them."

    In a 2014 study, Elizabeth Dunn, associate professor of psychology at UBC, invited people on their way into a coffee shop. One group was asked to seek out an interaction(互动) with its waiter; the other, to speak only when necessary. The results showed that those who chatted with their server reported significantly higher positive feelings and a better coffee shop experience. "It's not that talking to the waiter is better than talking to your husband," says Dunn. "But interactions with peripheral(边缘的) members of our social network matter for our well-being also."

    Dunn believes that people who reach out to strangers feel a significantly greater sense of belonging, a bond with others. Carducci believes developing such a sense of belonging starts with small talk. "Small talk is the basis of good manners," he says.

    Pakistan should be everyone's tourist destination for 2018, but what if you already live there?

    Then perhaps you should consider visiting these five must- visit places for the new year.

Lake Saiful Muluk

    At an altitude of 3, 224m, surrounded by now mountains, the lake rewards those that make the three-hour uphill walk from Naran. You will find the pathway just above the free market, but there is a superior option to get a jeep and split the costs with some other tourists; expect to pay about 700 rupees, worth it to view this natural beauty.

Deosai National Park

As another high point in Pakistan, it has an average altitude of 4,114m — the Deosai Plains are one of the highest plateaus(高原 )in the world. If you make it to the park, you expect to find rich plants and wild animals. The breathtaking scenery on show at the plains is enough to make 2018 a memorable year.

Naltar Valley

Accessible via a 2.5—hour drive from Gilgit, well worth visiting. Covered with pine trees and other plants, it has a dreamlike feel about it. Various colors all year around make you fall in love.

Shangrila Resort

    Right in the north of Pakistan in the Central valley of Gilgit-Baltistan. Locals call this a paradise(乐园）,and that's what it feels like. No visit is complete without checking out the restaurant which is built in the structure of an aircraft.

Rama Meadow

    Doesn't feel like Pakistan at all, more like somewhere in Minnesota. Watch the sheep and cows feeding while clear water flows in streams from high in the mountains. Against Chongra's ice-covered peak, this little meadow is a piece art.

    Youth football team members rescued more than two weeks after sudden flooding trapped them in a cave in Thailand are now being well looked after at a hospital in the northern city of Chiang Rai. In addition to treating the boys for potential body fluid loss, inadequate nutrition and lack of oxygen, their doctors also plan to closely monitor them for symptoms of diseases that may have been infected by animals living in the cave.

    "The next step is to make sure those kids and their families are safe, because living in a cave provides a different environment, which might contain animals that could transmit…disease," said the local hospital. The boys and their family members have been told to watch for symptoms such as headache, nausea(反胃), muscle pain or difficulty breathing, the reports added.

    Yet based on the location where the boys were trapped—more than four kilometers from the cave complex's main entrance, past some fully submerged passages—and the fact they have been swimming out wearing full scuba face masks, it seems unlikely that they were living with bats in the cave or breathed in bat-associated bacteria during their rescue, several infectious disease experts said. "It's hard to imagine bats got that deep into the cave because of all those narrow passageways, but it is possible," says Ian Lipkin, an animal expert and professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "It's unlikely that there would be many animals in there," notes Jonathan Epstein, a doctor at EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that studies diseases and how to prevent them. Bats typically like to rest in areas they can easily enter and exit, not in places that fully flood, he adds.

    Bats in Thailand have been linked with a wide range of viruses that are similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—Lipkin says. But it seems more likely the boys would have been exposed to infection-causing bacteria when they swam through the dirty water with cuts and scrapes. "If you are trying to prioritize issues with respect to health care for these kids, number one would be psychological damage and second will be bacterial infections from the cuts and scrapes they may have encountered." Lipkin says.

    In the early decades of the United States, the agrarian(土地的) movement promoted the farmer as society's hero. In the minds of agrarian thinkers and writers, the farmer was a person on whose well-being the health of the new country depended. The period between the Revolution, which ended in 1783, and the Civil War, which ended in 1865, was the age of the farmer in the United States. Agrarian philosophers, represented most eloquently by Thomas Jefferson, celebrated farmers extravagantly for their supposed centrality in a good society, their political virtue, and their Superior morality. And virtually all policy makers, whether they subscribed to the tenets of the philosophy held by Jefferson or not, recognized agriculture as the key component of the American economy. Consequently, government at all levels worked to encourage farmers as a social group and agriculture as economic enterprise.

    Both the national and state governments developed transportation infrastructure, building canals, roads, bridges, and railroads, deepening harbors, and removing obstructions from navigable streams. The national government imported plant and animal varieties and launched exploring expeditions into prospective farmlands in the West. In addition, government trade policies facilitated the exporting of agricultural products.

    For their part, farmers seemed to meet the social expectations agrarian philosophers had for them, as their broader horizons and greater self-respect, both products of the Revolution, were reflected to some degree in their behavior. Farmers seemed to become more scientific, joining agricultural societies and reading the farm newspapers that sprang up throughout the country. They began using improved implements, tried new crops and pure animal breeds, and became more receptive to modern theories of soil improvement.

    They also responded to inducements by national and state governments. Farmers streamed to the West, filling frontier lands with stunning rapidity. But farmers responded less to the expectations of agrarians and government inducements than to growing market opportunities. European demand for food from the United States seemed insatiable. War, industrialization, and urbanization all kept demand high in Europe. United States cities and industries grew as well; even industries not directly related to farming thrived because of the market, money, and labor that agriculture provided.