What's on?

Electric Underground

7.30pm－1.00am   Free at the Cyclops Theatre

    Do you know who's playing in your area? We're bringing you an evening of live rock and pop music from the best local bands. Are you interested in becoming a musician and getting a recording contract(合同)? If so, come early to the talk at 7.30pm by Jules Skye, a successful record producer. He's going to talk about how you can find the right person to produce you music.

Gee Whizz

8.30pm-10.30pm   Comedy at Kaleidoscope

    Come and see Gee Whizz perform. He's the funniest stand-up comedian on the comedy scene. This joyful show will please everyone, from the youngest to the oldest. Gee Whizz really knows how to make you laugh! Our bar is open from 7.00pm for drinks and snacks(快餐).

Simon's Workshop

5.00pm-7.30pm    Wednesdays at Victoria Stage

    This is a good chance for anyone who wants to learn how to do comedy. The workshop looks at every kind of comedy, and practices many different ways of making people laugh. Simon is a comedian and actor who has 10 years' experience of teaching comedy. His workshops are exciting and fun. An evening with Simon will give you the confidence to be funny.

Charlotte Stone

8.00pm-11.00pm     Pizza World

    Fine food with beautiful jazz music; this is a great evening out. Charlotte Stone will perform songs from her new best-selling CD, with James Pickering on the piano. The menu is Italian, with excellent meat and fresh fish, pizzas and pasta (面食). Book early to get a table. Our bar is open all day, and serves cocktails, coffee, beer, and white wine.

    When asked about happiness, we usually think of something extraordinary, an absolute delight, which seems to get rarer the older we get.

For kids, happiness has a magical quality. Their delight at winning a race or getting a new bike is unreserved (毫无掩饰的).

    In the teenage years the concept of happiness changes. Suddenly it's conditional on such things as excitement, love and popularity. I can still recall the excitement of being invited to dance with the most attractive boy at the school party.

    In adulthood the things that bring deep joy—love, marriage, birth—also bring responsibility and the risk of loss. For adults, happiness is complicated (复杂的).

    My definition of happiness is “the capacity for enjoyment”. The more we can enjoy what we have, the happier we are. It's easy to overlook the pleasure we get from the company of friends, the freedom to live where we please, and even good health.

    I experienced my little moments of pleasure yesterday. First I was overjoyed when I shut the last lunch-box and had the house to myself. Then I spent an uninterrupted morning writing, which I love. When the kids and my husband come home, I enjoyed their noise after the quiet of the day.

    Psychologists tell us that to be happy we need a mix of enjoyable leisure time and satisfying work. I don't think that my grandmother, who raised 14 children, had much of either. She did have a network of close friends and family, and maybe this what satisfied her.

    We, however, with so many choices and such pressure to succeed in every area, have turned happiness into one more thing we've got to have. We're so self-conscious about our “right” to it that it's making us miserable. So we chase it and equal it with wealth and success, without noticing that the people who have those things aren't necessarily happier.

    Happiness isn't about what happens to—it's about how we see what happens to us. It's the skillful way of finding a positive for every negative. It's not wishing for what we don't have , but enjoying what we do possess.

    Growing up, I wanted to be just like my mom. She was kind. People always seemed to feel comfortable in her presence. For years, she was a volunteer in our community. I loved going to the local nursing home with her where she taught a ceramics(制陶技术) class.

    On one summer day, Mama told me to get changed and meet her at the car.

I had planned to spend the day at the lake with friends. Why did she have to ruin everything? I imagined the cool lake water. Irritated，I climbed into the car and slammed the door shut. We sat in silence. I was too upset to make conversation.

    "Tasha, would you like to know where we are going?" Mama asked calmly.

    "No," I said.

    "We are going to volunteer at a children's shelter today. I have been there before and I think it would benefit you," she explained.

    When we reached the shelter, Mama rang the doorbell. Moments later, we were greeted by a woman. She led us to the front room where all of the children were playing. I noticed a baby whose body was scarred with iron marks. I was told it was because she wouldn't stop crying. The majority of the children had noticeable physical scars. Others hid their emotional wounds.

    As I took in my surroundings, I felt a gentle pull on my shirt. I looked down to see a little girl looking up at me. "Hi. You want to play dolls with me?" she asked. I looked over at Mama for reinforcement. She smiled and nodded. I turned back and said, "Sure." Her tiny hand reached up and held mine, as if to comfort me.

    My mom taught me a valuable lesson that summer. I returned to the shelter with her several times. During those visits, some of the children shared their troubled pasts with me and I learned to be grateful for what I had. Today as I try to instill (逐渐灌输) these values in my own child, I reflect back to that experience. It was a time that I will never forget.

    Who's in control of your life? Who's pulling your strings? For the majority of us, it's other people-society, colleagues, friends, family or our community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it," Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

    So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug-we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix(成瘾物)we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.

    But, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom-the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they're more interested in themselves than in you. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted (tired) and probably pleasing no one in the process.

    So how can we take back control? I think there's only one way-make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think. We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values- not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.

    It is not only praise or punishment that determines a child's level of confidence. There are some other important ways we shape our kids—particularly by giving instructions and commands in a negative or positive choice of words. For example, we can say to a child "Don't run into traffic!" or "Stay on the footpath close to me." In using the latter, you will be helping your kids to think and act positively, and to feel competent in a wide range of situation, because they know what to do, and aren't scaring themselves about what not to do.

    Actually, it is all in the way the human mind works. What we think, we automatically rehearse. For example, if someone offered you a million dollars not to think of a blue monkey for two minutes, you wouldn't be able to do it. When a child is told "Don't fall off the tree," he will think of two things: "don't" and "fall off the tree". That is, he will automatically create the picture of falling off the tree in his mind. A child who is vividly imagining falling off the tree is much more likely to fall off. So it is far better to use "Hold on to the tree carefully."

    Clearly, positive instructions help kids to understand the right way to do things. Kids do not always know how to be safe, or how to react to the warning of the danger in negative words. So parents should make their commands positive. "Sam, hold on firm to the side of the boat" is much more useful than "Don't you dare to fall out of the boat?" or worse still "How do you think I'll feel if you drown?" The changes are small but difference is obvious.

    Children learn how to guide and organize themselves from the way we guide them with our words, so it pays to be positive.

It's breathtaking to watch the delicate spring wildflowers come out from their blanket of leaves, bloom, develop and disperse (传播) fruit, all in a matter of a few short days or weeks.

Although they look fragile, these are tough little plants, each focusing its efforts on spreading its species. They have evolved to have a wide range of flower structures and colors, some with fragrances, attracting many different insect species to assist them in pollination (授粉).

There is one strategy that a surprising number of spring blooming native plants have evolved in common: seed dispersal by ants. As many as thirty percent of the spring flowering plant species in the forests of eastern North America have evolved to take advantage of this situation to benefit themselves. These species have evolved to provide food attached to their seeds to encourage ants to disperse those seeds. This food, called an elaiosome（油质体）, is a specialized fat body whose chemical composition more closely matches that of the insects that ants prefer than it does that of a seed.

When a fruit opens to disperse its seeds, the elaiosomes are an instant attraction for ants. They take the seed with its attached elaiosome back to their nests for consumption there, but they just eat the elaiosome, their preferred food, and dispose of the seed on their trash pile. This tends to be an environment that is rich in nutrients, and will benefit the growth of the new plant. Just to make sure the ants don't eat the seeds in addition to the elaiosome, some plant species have hard seed coatings that ants can't really bite through.

This evolutionary adaptation is somewhat similar to the strategy of plants that have evolved to surround their seeds with fleshy fruits to attract birds to assist them with seed dispersal. Given the fact that there are fewer birds available in early spring to help with seed dispersal, it makes sense that the early blooming plants evolved to partner instead with the ants for this service.

Did you ever wonder how your Spring Beauty managed to pop up in new locations in your lawn or garden? Thank an ant!