Why I've taken a break from holidays

    It is now close to four years since I last took a holiday. This is because I have come to the conclusion, over the course of my adult life, that I am not very good at it. You might think this sounds like saying you're not very good at drinking tea or listening to music. What could possibly be difficult about the natural act of putting your working life on hold for a couple of weeks and going somewhere warm to do nothing?

    I was a model holidaymaker as a kid. However, the problems started during my twenties. A trip to the south of France was ended after just two days, mainly because I had an urge to check my e-mails. Similarly, my honeymoon was cut short by 48 hours—not because my wife and I weren't enjoying ourselves, but because we were missing our cats.

    So what is my problem? On the surface, I'm probably a bit of a homebody. And I just find the pressure of being on holiday too severe: it always feels like having a gun held to my head and being forced to have fun. Somehow, packing a list of possessions and meeting a scheduled flight has none of the excitement of suddenly deciding to take a day off and driving somewhere for the fun of it.

    Thankfully, I'm not alone. This summer, most of my friends have decided not to have a break. And a recent survey (调查) proved the downside of holidays, with the results showing that nearly two thirds of people found that the calming effects of a holiday wore off within 24 hours, as stress levels returned to normal. And this year The Idler magazine published its Book of Awful Holidays. Here you will find a list of the five most ecologically-damaging vacations it's possible to take, along with 50 painful holiday experiences voted for on The Idler website.

    What interests me is what the concept of a “holiday” says about our lives. For me, the point of living is to have a life you enjoy for 52 weeks a year. The more I like my life and the better I structure it, the less I want to go away. Maybe I'm an unusual person for not liking holidays, but I just feel the time when I'm not working is too valuable to waste on them.

    Honey from the African forest is not only a kind of natural sugar, it is also delicious. Most people, and many animals, like eating it. However, the only way for them to get that honey is to find a wild bees' nest and take the honey from it. Often, these nests are high up in trees, and it is difficult to find them. In parts of Africa, though, people and animals looking for honey have a strange and unexpected helper - a little bird called a honey guide.

    The honey guide does not actually like honey, but it does like the wax in the beehives (蜂房). The little bird cannot reach this wax（蜂蜡）, which is deep inside the bees' nest. So, when it finds a suitable nest, it looks for someone to help it. The honey guide gives a loud cry that attracts the attention of both passing animals and people. Once it has their attention, it flies through the forest, waiting from time to time for the curious animal or person as it leads them to the nest. When they finally arrive at the nest, the follower reaches in to get at the delicious honey as the bird patiently waits and watches. Some of the honey, and the wax, always falls to the ground, and this is when the honey guide takes its share.

    Scientists do not know why the honey guide likes eating the wax, but nothing can prevent the birds from making efforts to get it. The birds seem to be able to smell wax from a long distance away. They will quickly arrive whenever a beekeeper is taking honey from his beehives, and will even enter churches when beeswax candles are being lit.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    The tallest building in the United States, the One World Trade Center, opened on November 3, 2014 in New York. The building is 1,776 feet tall, making it the 3rd tallest building in the world. It has 104 floors. The building stands in the area where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood. On September 11, 2001, a group of terrorists destroyed these twin towers and killed nearly 3,000 people. It took 8 years to build the new One World Trade Center. Does the height of the building in feet reminds you of something in history? The number is the year when the United States declared(宣布) its independence(独立) from Great Britain.

    One problem with such a tall building is how to clean the windows. Well, a platform(平台) hangs from ropes, and workers on the platform clean windows. On November 12, while two men were busy cleaning windows, a rope of the platform broke near the 68th floor. The two men were saved by cutting a hole in the glass window.

The two tallest buildings in the world are the BurjKhalifa in Dubai, UAE and the Makkah Royal Clock Tower in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

    Having experienced a shocking electrical accident, which caused him to become both blind and deaf, James Franco's world became completely dark and quiet for almost ten years. The loss of sight and hearing threw him into such sorrow that he tried a few times to put an end to his life. His family, especially his wife, did their best to tend and comfort him and finally he regained the will to live.

    One hot summer afternoon, he was taking a walk with a stick near his house when a thunderstorm started all at once. He stood under a large tree to avoid getting wet, but he was struck by lightning. Witnesses (目击者) thought he was dead but he woke up 20 minutes later, lying face down in muddy water. He was trembling badly, but when he opened his eyes, he could hardly believe what he saw: a tree and a muddy road. When Mrs. Franco came running up to him, shouting to their neighbors to call for help, he could see her and hear her voice for the first time in nearly ten years.

    The news of James regaining his sight and hearing quickly spread and many doctors came to examine him. Most of them said that he regained his sight and hearing from the shock he got from lightning. However, none of them could give a compelling answer as to why this should happen. The only reasonable explanation given by one doctor was that, since James lost his sight and hearing as a result of a sudden shock, perhaps, the only way for him to regain them was by another sudden shock.

    I waited half an hour, set the board, and sat in the studio, reviewing my questions until the telephone lines flashed.

    "Hello?"

    "This is Connie Chung. I'm so sorry I'm late."

    Connie Chung was one of the only four women anchors（主播）to make it into the club of major evening network television news. For almost an hour we talked about the industry. When I asked if she ever had an instructor throughout her trials, she turned around and offered to instruct me. When I asked why she decided to do it, she simply replied, "Because you're good."

    That afternoon I rushed home and told my mother what had happened. Without looking up, she just said "Good for you." Hearing this, I felt a sense of loss.  Her consistent response always made me feel under-appreciated.

    Until then I had been searching for something that I would never get—that sense of love and acceptance in a house full of negativity（消极）.

    I knew I needed to get rid of all the negativity in my life first, so I packed my bags and walked out of the house, thinking a risk would allow me to open myself to the world again and receive all the positive energy that I needed.

    Then radio became my way of connecting with others. My ability to book high-level guests and celebrities（名人）was gradually recognized and eventually all the words of encouragement from past guests and colleagues helped me to re-build my confidence levels. "I can do this," I kept telling myself, and pushed even harder to find my next aim.

    People had faith in me, so I developed faith in myself. Their positive attitudes towards themselves and towards me helped me develop my own positive attitude, leading to productive interactions with celebrities and adding to my list of instructors.

    I may not have started life surrounded by positivity but I surely feel that I am surrounded by it now. It's amazing how positivity builds on itself.

    Have you ever wondered what the longest word in the English language is? Believe it or not, there's no simple answer to the question. You might think it would be as easy as opening a dictionary and looking for the longest word. However, it's far more complicated (复杂的) than that.

    Over time, many people have suggested many different words for the title of the longest word in English. How can that be? That's because the first thing that people have different opinions on is what should be considered a word. Some of the words were simply made up to be the longest! For example, there is one really famous long word that most kids know. It comes from Disney's movie Mary Poppins: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which means wonderful. But since that 34-letter word was made up simply to be sung as a song in a movie, should it count?

    How about long words that actually describe something in the world? Scientists have come up with several possible choices. The name of a virus(病毒) totals 1,185 letters. There's also a protein(蛋白质) whose name totals 1, 909 letters. Should these win the title? "Not so fast!" say some people. Are these words ever actually used? Can they even be pronounced? And are they meaningful just because they are made up to be long?

    If you're wondering about some long words in common English, here are some examples. Those words include uncharacteristically (20 letters), deinstitutionalization(22 letters) and counterrevolutionaries (also 22 letters) Or perhaps the word "smiles" is the longest word in English. Sure, it has only six letters, but there is a "mile between the first and the last letters!