Our room was on the second floor but you could still hear the roar of the ocean and see the stars at night. I used to take long walks along the water. The food in town was wonderful and the people were very friendly. The area was very quiet and peaceful, and fairly deserted.

    The last evening of our vacation, however, we all heard strange footsteps following closely behind us as we were walking up to our room in the holiday centre. We turned around and noticed a fairly young man moving very rapidly across the beach and getting closer to us. He was tall and wore a baseball cap. We couldn't see his face and he was approaching us very rapidly. The man's actions made my dad very nervous. Dad warned us that we'd better try to make it to our hotel room as quickly as possible. I didn't like my dad's voice; I could hear fear in it. It was late and we were all alone. We didn't have any cell phones on us. I never saw Dad as worried as he was then and I knew that something was terribly wrong. The sense of fear started to overwhelm Mom and me. We had had such a good time in town. Now, the night was rapidly turning into a dangerous situation.

    We could hear the man's footsteps getting closer. Dad's face was almost pale. The so-called intruder (侵入者) had moved nearer and nearer when all of a sudden, the nearby vending (自动贩卖) machine started going crazy and spitting out cans of soda! The noise actually scared the intruder and he ran out of sight. My parents were shaking, but we all turned around to see who had put money into the vending machine downstairs, and actually saved us, but no one was around at all. Not a soul.

    It's one vacation I will never forget.

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    Here are some of the world's most impressive subways．

    Robots make me nervous — especially the ones which seem to think for themselves. I was embarrassed to admit this till I heard that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, felt the same way.

Gates said in an interview with the social networking and news website Reddit: "I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern."

    Well, maybe I don't have to worry about my computer and kitchen equipment yet. After I use them I can always pull the plug. But in the future, machines might find a way to prevent us from switching them off. There's a terrible thought!

    Maybe the problem with computers too clever for us is not that they are evil like some we've seen in sci-fi movies. What could put us in danger is that they might be too efficient. That's what philosopher Nick Bostrom from Oxford University believes. He says that machines are indifferent to humans and in pursuit of their own goals, the destruction of people might be just additional damage. Bostrom gives us an example: A machine which might have as its only goal to produce as many paperclips as possible might look at human bodies as extra material for paperclips and go after you. Because it is, well, a machine, it would not take pity on you.

    It's a good thing that American writer Isaac Asimov thought about how far robots can go and left us his three rules of robotics. They state that a robot may not hurt a human being or allow the human being to come to harm.

I'm glad my machines at home are "dumb". All my cleaner wants to take over is the carpet in my living room. Let's hope they don't create an appliance which wants to take over the world!

    I first began experiencing anxiety and depression at the age of 14, after being bullied (欺凌) at school for years. While at first anxiety and depression would come and go, it eventually became a constant part of my life.

    I was so eager to find the solution to overcoming my anxiety and depression that I tried everything from when I was in college to graduate school: mood-changing medication, special teas, yoga, anything I read about in books, and advice given by doctors. Despite this, I still felt I hadn't even come close to managing the problem.

    But one afternoon, my eyes fell upon an article in a magazine I was reading that talked about how dogs were able to help people with anxiety and depression. The very next day, I decided to get a dog—a corgi. When I brought my little corgi, Buddy, home. I didn't realize how much he would change my life. It didn't happen right away, however.

    Once the “puppy excitement” went away, my anxiety and depression came back as usual. One morning, I woke up with those familiar feeling again. I didn't want to get out of bed. I turned to pull the covers back over my head and give up. That's when I saw Buddy.

    Buddy started jumping all over me, licking my face, letting me know that it was time to go outside. It was as if he were saying, “There's no time to be sad; the world is amazing!” And for the first time in my life, my life was changing. I really was a new person. This was my new beginning.

    It's been more than a year since that day, and I've never spent another morning unable to get out of bed. I've not cried myself to sleep or spent my days stuck with fear and regret. Sure, I still have days when I feel sad or anxious. But with Buddy, my best friend, by my side, I've finally learned how to manage these feelings and emotions.

    "Make way, good people, make way, in the King's name! "cried he. "Open a text; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child, may have a fair sight of her brave clothing, from this time till an hour past noon. A blessing on the moral Colony of the Massachusetts, where immorality is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet （鲜红色的；罪孽深重的）letter in the market-place!

    A lane was at once opened through the crowd. Led by the beadle （狱吏），and attended by an irregular procession of serious-looking men and unkind-looking women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face, and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the shameful letter on her breast.

    It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison-door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be considered to be a rather long journey; for, though her manner was proud, she perhaps underwent an extreme pain from every footstep of those who thronged to see her, as if her heart had been thrown into the street for them all to step upon. In our nature, however, there is a condition that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present suffering, but chiefly by the pain that rankles （使痛心）after it. With almost a calm manner, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her suffering, and came to a sort of scaffold （刑台），at the western end of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.

My Favourite Books

    Jo Usmar is a writer for Cosmopolitan and co­author of the This Book Will series(系列)of lifestyle books. Here she picks her top reads.

Matilda

Roald Dahl

    I once wrote a paper on the influence of fairy tales on Roald Dahl's writing and it gave me a new appreciation for his strange and delightful words. Matilda's battles with her cruel me parents and the bossy headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, are equally fumy and frightening, but they're also aspirational.

After Dark

Haruki Murakami

    It's about two sisters­Eri, a model who either won't or can't stop sleeping, and Mari, a young student. In trying to connect to her sister. Mari starts changing her life and discovers a world of diverse "night people" who are hiding secrets.

Gone Girl

Gillian Fynn

    There was a bit of me that didn't want to love this when everyone else on the planet did but the horror story is brilliant. There's tension and anxiety from the beginning as Nick and Amy battle for your trust. It's a real whodunit and the frustration when you realize what's going on is horribly enjoyable

The Stand

Stephen King

    This is an excellent fantasy novel from one of the best storytellers around. After a serious flu outbreak wipes out 99.4% of the world's population, a battle unfolds between good and evil among those let. Randall Flagg is one of the scariest characters ever.