When you travel in other countries, you'll have to get yourself well prepared to ensure your safety and handle emergencies.

Before you leave, you'd better:

1). Take out medical insurance policy and learn what the plan covers and whether departure or return to the hometown is covered. Figure out payment choices, such as whether you have to speak directly with the insurance company, before or after treatment, whether you have to pay first and get compensation later.

2). Keep up to date on all required vaccinations (接种疫苗) .

3). Learn about the city or area where you are going to travel. Know how to say street names and landmarks in the local language. Figure out unique climate issues such as altitude, seasonal changes, potentially risky animals and insects.

4). Visit some local hospitals and write down addresses in the local language along with emergency entrance locations; do the same for dental/pediatric (小儿科的) services. Get first aid equipment with necessary medications. Take enough prescribed medication from the home country.

5). Carry a card or note written in both English and the local language listing your emergency contact numbers, name, basic medical information such as blood type and allergies (过敏) .

6). Ensure a reliable means of communication is available and carry an extra phone battery and a charger. Ensure that housemaids, drivers, office assistants, those who work or travel know how to call for medical assistance since they may be the only ones available in an emergency.

7). Make sure to bring all documents and visas along with you. Plan your journey carefully and carry copies of documents (ID, insurance policy records, medical records) and keep in a place where someone else could access them in an emergency.

    Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed Lady Day by her loyal friend and musical partner, Lester Young, Holiday had a great influence on jazz and pop singing. Her voiced style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of controlling tempo (节奏). Above all, she was admired for her deeply personal and direct approach to singing.

    She co-wrote a few songs, and several of them have become jazz standards, notably God Bless the Child, Don't Explain, and Lady Sings the Blues. She also became famous for singing jazz standards written by others, including Easy Living and Strange Fruit.

    Her early career is hard to track down with accuracy. But she later gained work singing in local jazz clubs before being spotted by a talent scout (星探), John Hammond in 1933.

    Her voice and recordings were loved for the depth of emotion and intensity she could bring to classic standards. Her range of voice was not the greatest, but her extraordinary low rough voice was soon to become very famous and influential.

    She was an important icon (偶像) of the jazz era and influential in the development of jazz singing. In the late 1930s, she began singing a civil rights song called Strange Fruit, a song which told the tale of a lynching (用私刑处死) of a black man in the Deep South. It was very controversial for that period and it was not played on radios. It was recorded for Commodore Records and she performed it many times over the next 20 years.

    Billie Holiday had a difficult upbringing which influenced her attitude toward life. She experienced many violent relationships. She also became increasingly dependent on various drugs which contributed to her early death in 1959, aged just 44.

    Most dog owners feel that their dogs are their best friends. Almost everyone likes dogs because they try hard to please their owners. One of my favorite stories is about a dog who wanted the owner to please him. One of my friends has a large German shepherd(牧羊犬) named Jack. These dogs are often very intelligent (clever). Every Sunday afternoon, my friend takes Jack for a walk in the park. Jack likes these long walks very much.

    One Sunday afternoon, a young man came to visit my friend. He stayed a long time, and he talked and talked. Soon it was time for my friend to take Jack for his walk, but the visitor didn't leave. Jack became very worried about his walk in the park. He walked around the room several times and then sat down directly in front of the visitor and looked at him. But the visitor paid no attention. He continued talking. Finally, Jack couldn't stand(容忍) it any longer. He went out of the room and came back a few minutes later. He sat down again in front of the visitor, but this time he held the man's hat in his mouth.

    German shepherds aren't the only intelligent dogs. Another intelligent dog is a Seeing Eye dog. This is a special dog that helps blind people walk along the streets and do many other things. We call these dogs Seeing Eye dogs because they are the "eyes" of the blind people and they help them to "see". Seeing Eye dogs generally go to special schools for several years to learn to help blind people.

    US people are overweight, eat lots of fast food and fill their homes with pets. At least that's what 21 European teenagers think.

    The students, 18 from Germany and 3 from France, are exchange students. They are studying in the US for a year. After a few days in the US, they said what they thought about the country.

    Most talked about the amount of fast food US people eat. It's not that the students don't eat fast food. They just don't eat as much.

    Laetitia Villeneuve from France said she eats fast food, usually McDonald's, only once or twice a year.

    "I like it," said Nora Koeberle from Germany. "But I couldn't eat it every day. I'd get fat. "

    Students are surprised at how big US people seem.

    "There are fat people in Germany," said Antonia Greimel from Germany. "But not as many as there are here."

    They also spoke about the animals. Silvana Wolfram from Germany said she had heard about how people had lots of pets in the US.

    Other ways of US high schools interested the students.

    For example, Koeberle said she wouldn't be able to play an instrument or sports as part of her classes in Germany. She can in the US.

    But the best thing about US high schools is something the European kids can't get back home. "I do wish we had parties," Koeberle said.

    Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that perfect portable bike would be "like a magic carpet... You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag". Then he paused: "But you'll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel."

It was a rare — indeed unique — occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that was divided into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout's Wonderful Bag, a leather case.

    Grout's aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn't that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout's day, tyres were solid, which made the business of dividing a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn't do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated(充气的) tyre.

    So, in a 21st-century environment, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons , has developed a wheel that can be folded into something like a slender ellipse(椭圆). From beginning to end, the tyre remains inflated.

    Will the young Fitzsimons's folding wheel make it into production? I have no idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It's as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there's plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than £1,000 that can be knocked down so small that can be carried on a plane ——minus wheels, of course ——as hand baggage.

    Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie's imagination? No. But it's progress.

    Alison Malmon was ending her freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. US, when she got the news: Her older brother Brian, a student at Columbia University; was suffering from mental illness.

    Inspired by this, Malmon formed a group at her university to organize students to talk openly about mental health. It soon blossomed into a national organization that today has more than 450 campus chapters. Leaders with the organization spend their time talking with college students about the pressure that today's young people face.

    "What you hear often is just a need to be perfect," said Malmon, "and a need to present oneself as perfect." A new study in the UK proved that this need for perfectionism is simply part of today's society. In the study, two researchers studied more than 40,000 students from the US, Canada, and the UK. They found that what they called "socially-prescribed (社会定向型的) perfectionism" increased by a third between 1989 and 2016.

    Lead researcher Thomas Curran said that while so many of today's young people try to present a perfect appearance online, social media isn't the only reason behind this trend. Instead, he said, it may be driven by competition in modem society, meaning young people can't avoid being sorted and ranked in both education and employment. That comes from new normal situation like greater numbers of college students, national examination and parenting that increasingly emphasizes success in education.

    For example, in 1976, half of high school seniors expected to get a college degree of some kind. By 2008, more than 80 percent expected the same. The researchers also said changes in parenting styles over the last two decades might have had an impact. As parents feel increased pressure to raise successful children, they in turn pass their "achievement anxieties" onto their kids through "too much participation in their child's activities or emotions

    Those in the mental health community like Malmon say they're concerned about the impact the culture of perfectionism has on mental health on campuses. "Mental health has truly become this generation's social justice (公正)issue," she said. "It's our job to equip them with the tools and to let people know that it's not their fault."