There is a growing number of kidults—or adults who wear themask of maturity but prefer to pander(迎合) to their inner child.

    They feel ill equipped for parenthood, because they don't see what values or lessons they could honestly pass on to their young, besides self-centeredness and a passion for the good things in life. They are trying to live by not acting their age.

    As Ms Jane put it in her letter: I'm married, in my late 20s and enjoy a lifestyle other married graduate couples enjoy: winning and dining, tasteful clothes, travel and a career. Why give up all these for a baby?

    It is reported that when asked whether they were adults, most people in their 20s answered they were not sure. This reflected a global economy in which people chased more papers to get better jobs that would comfortably support middle class living.

    Being a kidult is not all about being selfish, though. With the untold uncertainties of war, fluctuating(波动) markets, disease and terrorism, many see this world as a poor place to live in—let alone bring kids up in. This seems especially so in urban living. All anyone wants after a long, hard day at work is some peace and quiet.

    My classmate, Jenny, mused(沉思) recently howour friends living in small Malaysian towns were onto their second or third kids. Maybe they just loved having children around. Or maybe, in their own way, they wanted to leave the world a better place than they found it.

    That's how you, I and everyone know we have the chance tobreathe air, touch grass and see sky. I think out parents understand that just being alive is an experience worth passing on.

    I have received many Christmas gifts over the years. The best gift I ever received was presented to me by a stranger. I never even knew his name and I only had contact with him for less than 60 seconds. His Christmas present to me changed the way I had thought about people and Christmas.

    It was several years ago when my wife asked me to meet her at the local department store on Black Friday morning. They had advertised a child's bike that she wanted to purchase for our son. We stood with a very large crowd, waiting for the manager to blow the whistle. After a while, the whistle blew. It was like throwing a bucket of fish into a tank of sharks. I told my wife that if we obtained a bike, fine, but we did not, I was OK with that too,

    As the shelf of bikes began to gradually decrease in size, I saw my polite opportunity to wrap my hands around the corner of one of the boxes. I lifted it off the box and suddenly felt some mild resistance. I looked up to see one of the largest gentlemen I had ever seen in my life. Threat was not the word to describe his presence. He was decorated with numerous belts of metal pointed leather around both arms and even his neck. Tattoos(文身) were an obvious passion of his.

    I started to return anxiously the box but he gently pushed it back in my direction and back into my hands. He then directed it into my shopping cart. He look d at me, smiled, and said, “Merry Christmas. ”My wife and I went to the checkout, paid for the bike and went home. All the way home I was thinking that this moment was by far the best Christmas gift I had ever received. The kindness of a stranger that broke all previous views I may have had of stereotypes and prejudices. I will never forget the tenderness of a human heart in a simple act.

    You may have seen many pumpkins in posters and TV shows recently since Halloween came on October 31.

    Lanterns made of pumpkins, also known as jack-o'-lanterns, are often seen during Halloween. Many people in the U.S. like to make them and put them in front of their houses. People hollow out（挖空）a pumpkin, carve a face on one side and place a candle inside to make the pumpkin glow. The lanterns can look funny or scary.

    This is not the only way in which pumpkins are part of American culture.

    During the Thanksgiving holiday, pumpkin pie is a common food. It is made from pumpkins and has some delicious spices to give it a nice flavor. People often put some cream on top of it before serving it. It is one of my favorite things to eat during Thanksgiving.

    There is also “pumpkin chucking”. It's a competition where people build machines to throw pumpkins through the air. The person whose pumpkin flies the farthest wins the competition. The world record for pumpkin chucking was set in Utah in 2010. The distance for that world record was about 1.69 kilometers!

    Finally, there are also pumpkin growing contests. For these contests, farmers try to grow the biggest pumpkins they can. The person who has the biggest pumpkin will win the first prize.

    Most people want to know how things are made. They honestly admit, however, that they hardly know a thing when it comes to understanding how a piece of music is made. Where a composer (作曲家） begins, how he manages to keep going- in fact, how and when he learns his trade - all are covered in complete darkness. The composer, in short, is a man of mystery (神秘）.

    One of the first things the common man wants to know about is the part inspiration (灵感） plays in a composer's work. He finds it difficult to believe that composers are not much interested in that question. Writing music is as natural for the composer as eating or sleeping for all. Music is something that the composer happens to have been born for.

    The composer, therefore, does not say to himself: "Do I feel inspired?" He says to himself. "Do I feel like working today?" And if he feels like working, he does. It is more or less like saying to himself: "Do I feel sleepy?" if you feel sleepy, you go to sleep. If you don't feel sleepy you stay up. If the composer doesn't feel like working, he doesn't work. It's as simple as that.

    After decades of cat-and-mouse between athletes and the word anti-doping agency (WADA), athletes found what they must have believed to be the ultimate (终极的) doping agent: their own blood. To enhance athletic performance with your own blood, you draw your blood and store it in a freezer. Your body compensates by creating more blood. Then, months later, just before a competition, you can re-inject (注射) the old blood for a boost. As the red-blood-cell count goes up, so does an athlete's ability to absorb oxygen. The more oxygen you get with each breath, the more energy your body is able to bum and the better you are able to perform.

    Although the enhancement is small compared to actual drugs, it can be the difference between a gold medal and a silver medal. Best of all, "extra blood" was never something WADA tested for.

    But WADA wasn't going to sit by and be fooled. What it came up with in response might be a solution to stop doping once and for all: an athlete biological passport (ABP). The idea is to record some biological features of an athlete through testing done at regular intervals. The biological passport's partial implementation (实施)—recording blood and steroid levels—began in January 2014.

    When all necessary biological features are finally combined, WADA will no longer need to worry about finding new methods to detect a drug. It will only have to detect (检测) resulting changes in the body. In the case of blood doping, if the athlete's normal red-blood-cell count is, say, 47%, but then is found to be 51% after a competition, cheating may have been involved.

    WADA is confident that the biological passport could even prevent genetic changes—the ultimate, ever-lasting enhancement—which are surely coming next. If an athlete inserts a performance enhancing gene, it will probably leave detectable changes in the body, that would differ from the athlete's feature in the biological passport.