The clock struck eleven at night. The whole house was quiet. Everyone was in bed except me. Under the strong light, I looked sadly before me at a huge pile of that troublesome stuff they call “books”.

    I was going to have my examination the next day. "When can I go to bed?" I asked myself. I didn't answer, in fact I dared not.

    The clock struck twelve. "Oh, dear!" I cried, "ten more books to read before I can go to bed!” We pupils are the most wretched creatures in the world. Dad does not agree with me on this. He did not have to work so hard when he was a boy ."

    The clock struck one. I was quite desperate now. I forgot all I had learnd. I was too tired to go on. I did the only thing I could. I prayed, “Oh, God, Please help me pass the exam tomorrow. I do promise to work hard afterwards, Amen.” My eyes were so heavy that I could hardly open them. A few minutes later, with my head on the desk, I fell asleep.

    It was a winter morning,just a couple of weeks before Christmas 2005.While most people were warming up their ears,Trevor,my husband,had to get up early to ride his bike four kilometers away from home to work.On arrival, he parked his bike outside the back door as he usually does.After putting in 10 hours of labor,he returned to find his bike gone.

    The bike,a black Kona 18 speed,was our only transport（交通工具）.Trevor used it to get to work,putting in 60-hour weeks to support（养活）his young family.And the bike was also used to get groceries（食品杂货）saving us from having to walk long distances from where we live.

    I was so said that someone would steal our bike that I wrote to the newspaper and told them our story.Shortly after that,several people in our area offered to help.One wonderful stranger even bought a bike,then called my husband to pick it up.Once again my husband had a way to get to and from his job.It really is an honor（幸事）that a complete stranger would go out of their way for someone they have never met before.

    People say that a smile can be passed from one person to another,but acts of kindness from strangers are even more so.This experience has had a spreading effect in our lives because it strengthened our faith in humanity（人性）as a whole.And it has influenced（影响）us to be more mindful of ways we,too,can share with others.No matter how or how small,an act of kindness shows that someone cares.And the results can be everlasting.

    Ideas about polite behavior are different from one culture to another. Some societies, such as America and Australia, for example, are mobile and very open. People here change jobs and move houses quite often. As a result, they have a lot of relationships that often last only a short time, and they need to get to know people quickly. So it's normal to have friendly conversations with people that they have just met, and you can talk about things that other cultures would regard as personal.

    On the other hand, there are more crowded and less mobile societies where long–term relationships are more important. A Malaysian or Mexican business person, for example, will want to get to know you very well before he or she feels happy to start business. But when you do get to know each other, the relationship becomes much deeper than it would in a mobile society.

    To Americans, both Europeans and Asians seem cool and formal at first. On the other hand, as a passenger from a less mobile society puts it, it's no fun spending several hours next to a stranger who wants to tell you all about his or her life and asks you all sorts of questions that you don't want to answer.

    Cross-cultural differences aren't just a problem for travelers, but also for the flights that carry them. All flights want to provide the best service, but ideas about good service are different from place to place. This can be seen most clearly in the way that problems are dealt with.

    Some societies have “universalist” cultures. These societies strongly respect rules, and they treat every person and situation in basically the same way.

     “Particularist” societies, on the other hand, also have rules, but they are less important than the society's unwritten ideas about what is right or wrong for a particular situation or a particular person. So the normal rules are changed to fit the needs of the situation or the importance of the person.

    This difference can cause problems. A traveler from a particularist society, India, is checking in for a flight in Germany, a country which has a universalist culture. The Indian traveler has too much luggage, but he explains that he has been away from home for a long time and the suitcases are full of presents for his family. He expects that the check–in official will understand his problem and will change the rules for him. The check–in official explains that if he was allowed to have too much luggage, it wouldn't be fair to the other passengers. But the traveler thinks this is unfair, because the other passengers don't have his problem.

    I had an experience some years ago, which taught me something about the ways in which people make a bad situation worse by blaming themselves. One January, I had to hold two funerals on successive days for two elderly women in my community. Both had died “full of years”, as the Bible would say. Their homes happened to be near each other, so I paid condolence(吊唁) calls on the two families on the same afternoon.

    At the first home, the son of the deceased(已故的)woman said to me, “If only I had sent my mother to Florida and gotten her out of this cold and snow, she would be alive today. It's my fault that she died.” At the second home, the son of the other deceased woman said, “If only I hadn't insisted on my mother's going to Florida, she would be alive today. That long airplane ride, the sudden change of climate, was more than she could take. It's my fault that she's dead.”

    You see that any time there is a death, the survivors will feel guilty. Because the course of action they took turned out bad, they believe that the opposite course would have turned out better. After all, how could it have turned out any worse?

    There seem to be two elements involved in our willingness to feel guilty. The first is our pressing need to believe that the world makes sense, that there is a cause for every effect and a reason for everything that happens that leads us to find patterns and connections both where they really exist and where they exist only in our minds. The second element is the view that we are the cause of what happens, especially the bad things that happen. It seems to be a short step from believing that every event has a cause to believe that every disaster is our fault. The roots of this feeling may lie in our childhood.

    A baby comes to think that the world exists to meet his needs, and that he makes everything happen in it. He wakes up in the morning and summons the rest of the world to its tasks. He cries, and someone comes to attend to him. When he is hungry, people feed him, and when he is wet, people change him. Very often, we do not completely outgrow that childish view that our wishes cause things to happen.

    Parents and kids today dress alike, listen to the same music, and are friends. Is this a good thing? Sometimes, when Mr. Ballmer and his 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, listen to rock music together and talk about interests both enjoy, such as pop culture, he remembers his more distant relationship with his parents when he was a teenager.

    “I would never have said to my mom, 'Hey, the new Weezer album is really great. How do you like it?''' says Ballmer. “There was just a complete gap in taste.”

    Music was not the only gulf. From clothing and hairstyles to activities and expectations, earlier generations of parents and children often appeared to move in separate orbits.

    Today, the generation gap has not disappeared, but it is getting narrow in many families. Conversations on subjects such as sex and drugs would not have taken place a generation ago. Now they are comfortable and common. And parent-child activities, from shopping to sports, involve a feeling of trust and friendship that can continue into adulthood.

    No wonder greeting cards today carry the message, “To my mother, my best friend.”

    But family experts warn that the new equality can also result in less respect for parents. “There's still a lot of strictness and authority on the part of parents out there, but there is a change happening,” says Kerrie, a psychology professor at Lebanon Valley College. “In the middle of that change, there is a lot of confusion among parents.”

    Family researchers offer a variety of reasons for these evolving roles and attitudes. They see the 1960s as a turning point. Great cultural changes led to more open communication and a more democratic process that encourages everyone to have a say.

    “My parents were on the 'before' side of that change, but today's parents, the 40-year-olds, were on the 'after' side,” explains Mr. Ballmer, “It's not something easily accomplished by parents these days, because life is more difficult to understand or deal with, but sharing interests does make it more fun to be a parent now.”

    In general, people talk about two groups of colors: warm colors and cool colors. Researchers in psychology think that there are also two groups of people: people who prefer warm colors and people who prefer cool colors.

    The warm colors are red, orange and yellow. Where there are warm colors and a lot of light, people usually want to be active. People think that red, for example, is exciting. Sociable people, those who like to be with others, like red. The cool colors are green, blue and violet. These colors, unlike warm colors, are relaxing. Where there are cool colors, people are usually quiet. People who like to spend time alone often prefer blue.

    Red may be exciting, but one researcher says that time seems to pass more slowly in a room with warm colors than in a room with cool colors. He suggests that a warm color, such as red or orange is a good color for a living room or restaurant. People who are talking or eating do not want time to pass quickly. Cool colors are better for offices or factories if the people who are working there want time to pass quickly.

    Researchers do not know why people think some colors are warm and other colors are cool. However, almost everyone agrees that red, orange, and yellow are warm and that green, blue, and violet are cool. Perhaps warm colors remind people of warm days and the cool colors remind them of cool days. Because in the north the sun is higher during summer, the hot summer sunlight appears yellow.