Do you want to get home from work knowing you have made a real difference in someone's life?

    If yes, don't care about sex or age! Come and join us, then you'll make it!

Position: Volunteer Social Care Assistant

(No Pay with Free Meals)

Place: Manchester

Hours: Part Time

    We arc now looking for volunteers to support people with learning disabilities to live active lives! Only 4 days left. Don't miss the chance of lending your warm hands to help others!

Role:

    You will provide people with learning disabilities with all aspects of their daily lives. You will help them to develop new skills. You will help them to protect their rights and their safety. But your primary concern is to let them know they are valued.

Skills and Experience Required:

    You will have the right values and great listening skills. You will be honest and patient. You will have the ability to drive a car and to communicate in fluent written and spoken English since you'll have to help those people with different learning disabilities. Previous care-related experience will be a great advantage for you.

    Once upon a time, there was a lovely vegetable field, on which grew a very thick tree. Both the vegetables and the tree gave the place a wonderful appearance, which was the joy of the garden's owner. What no one knew was that the vegetables in the field and the tree couldn't stand each other. The vegetables hated the tree's shadow, because it left them only just enough light to survive. The tree, on the other hand, hated the vegetables because they drank nearly all the water before it could get to him, leaving him with just enough to survive.

    The situation became so extreme that the vegetables got totally fed up and decided to use up all the water in the ground so that the tree would dry up. The tree answered back by refusing to give the vegetables shadow from the hot midday sun, so they both began to dry up. Before long, the vegetables were really thin and the tree's branches were drying up.

    Neither of them thought that the gardener, on seeing his vegetable field becoming worse, would stop watering it. When he did that, both the tree and the vegetables really learned what thirst was. There seemed to be no solution, but one of the vegetables, a small courgette（小胡瓜）, understood what was going on, and decided to deal with it. Despite the little water and the unbearable heat, the little courgette did all he could to grow, grow... He managed to grow so big that the gardener started watering the field again. The gardener wanted to enter that beautiful big courgette in some gardening contest.

    They should really learn how to live in harmony）with those around them, doing the best they could. So they decided to work together, and help each other instead of fighting, using both the shadow and the water in the best combination to grow good vegetables. Seeing how well they were doing, the gardener now gave the best of care to his vegetable field, watering it better than any other field for miles around.

    Are you an optimist? Do you look at your glass and see it as half full? Do you believe that every cloud has a silver lining and that generally things turn out for the best? Do you believe that if something is meant to be, it will be? If you reply "yes" to all of these questions, then you are an optimist. You probably are enthusiastic, cheerful and outgoing. You may well be successful at work and in love.

    But you may be misguided because things don't turn out for the best. You may believe that when one door closes another one opens (For example, you may fail to land a new job, but another chance will come around soon). Wrong. When one door closes, another door slams in your face. That's bitter reality.

    Now a book has been published which confirms what we pessimists(悲观者) have suspected all along. It's called The Positive Power of Defensive Pessimism. Its author argues that defensive pessimism can lead to positive results. Defensive pessimism is a strategy used to manage fear, anxiety and worry. Defensive pessimists prepare for things by setting low outcomes for themselves. They carefully consider everything that may go wrong and plan for ways to handle these problems. And this gives them a sense of control. Lawrence Sanno, a psychology professor, says, "What's interesting about defensive pessimists is that they tend to be very successful people, so their low opinion of the situation's outcomes is not realistic. They use it to motivate themselves to perform better."

    So far, so good. This is not rocket science. Defensive pessimists prepare carefully and consider what might go wrong, whether at work, on a date or even in a sports game. It makes sense to have a backup plan. There are many sayings in English urging caution. For example, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket", and "Don't count your chickens until they hatch." To have a confident and optimistic approach to life's problems is good. But listen to what Woody Alien, the American comedian says, "Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem."

    There are pros and cons to being an optimist and a pessimist. Don't feel bad if you see the glass half empty. You are a realist. But lighten up and hook up with someone who sees the same glass half full.

    Karen Bystedt was born in Israel, but lived in London and California as a child. In 1982, as a photography (摄影) student at New York University, she was photographing male models for a book when she came across an ad featuring Andy Warhol, a very famous artist. She thought it would be really great to put him in her book.

    So she called Andy Warhol at his studio in Union Square and asked if she could photograph him.

Two weeks later, Bystedt took a rented Hasselblad camera and lights to Warhol's famed "Factory" on 14th street. She ended up taking 36 pictures, and published two in her book, Not Just Another Pretty Face, published in 1983. Warhol came to its launch (发行) party—and that was the last time she saw him.

    A few years later, she packed the portraits in a box and moved to Los Angeles. But after she'd gotten settled, she couldn't find them. She couldn't remember whether she had given the photos away or just left them in some forgotten storage unit. Either way, she thought they were lost forever.

    In 2011, Bystedt became determined to find the missing films(底片). She spent two weeks going through two old garages, where she had put a bunch of belongings decades before. In a cardboard box, she found ten of the original films, covered in dust. She and a friend spent four months digitizing and cleaning the images up, pixel(像素) by pixel.

    Bystedt was not content to merely publish the unseen photos. She invited contemporary artists to paint over and around her Warhol pictures, breathing new life into her old work. So she began reaching out to artists, seeing if they would be interested in putting their own stamp on the pictures.

    The responses was overwhelming. Bystedt's new exhibit, "The Lost Warhols," opened on May 1, 2018 at 178 Sixth Avenue in Soho, New York, included 66 different interpretations of her portraits from 34 artists.

    Mandara seemed to know something big was about to happen. So she let out a yell, caught hold of her 2-year-old daughter Kibibi and climbed up into a tree. She lives at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.

    And on Tuesday, August 23rd, witnesses said she seemed to sense the big earthquake that shook much of the East Coast before any humans knew what was going on. And she's not the only one. In the moments before the quake, an orangutan (猩猩) let out a loud call and then climbed to the top of her shelter.

    “It's very different from their normal call,” said Brandie Smith, the zookeeper. “The lemurs (monkey like animals of Madagascar) will sound an alarm if they see or hear something highly unusual.”

    But you can't see or hear an earthquake 15 minutes before it happens, can you? Maybe you can——if you're an animal.

    “Animals can hear above and below our range of hearing,” said Brandie Smith. “That's part of their special abilities. They're more sensitive to the environment, which is how they survive.”

    Primates weren't the only animals that seemed to sense the quake before it happened. One of the elephants made a warning sound and a huge lizard (蜥蜴) ran quickly for cover. The flamingoes (a kind of birds) gathered before the quake and stayed together until the shaking stopped.

    So what kind of vibrations (震动) were the animals picking up in the moments before the quake? Scientist Susan Hough said earthquakes produce two types of waves——a weak “P” wave and then a much stronger “S” wave. The “P” stands for “primary”. And the “S” stands for “secondary”. She thinks the “P” wave might be what sets the animals off.

    Not all the animals behaved unusually before the quake. For example, Smith said the zoo's giant pandas didn't jump up until the shaking actually began. But many of the other animals seemed to know something was coming before it happened. “I'm not surprised at all,” Smith said.

    The man goes quietly into the room. He stands over the bed where his three-day-old son is lying and begins to speak to him.

    "My son, I have dreamt of you for many, many years. I had your name picked out even before you were born because I knew that I wanted you. Every time I thought of you I would have a smile on my face. Gabriel. You always gave me joy."

    "I really hope we have a great relationship, where you can talk to me about anything and not be embarrassed. Most of the time it will seem like I am too old to understand, but I'm sure you will see that, as I did with my father, my advice is some of the best you will get."

    "I am sorry for the misunderstandings (误会) we will have, but you will understand I spent my whole life waiting for you. You are my son, so I am not going to sit back and watch you hurt yourself. You are very important to me."

    The man stops and looks at his son. Then he begins to sob (呜咽).

    "Sorry my dear, I'm crying because something bad happened. I am seriously ill. I will leave you soon." The man gives a weak laugh. "This is the first time in many years I have been brought to tears." The man kisses the baby who is sleeping so soundly and whispers, "I will love you forever."