House Sitting

    In many countries of the world people do what is called house sitting. It means that if owners of the house are going away, they want someone to come into their home and look after the house and maybe pets while they are away.

    In Australia, many people travel. After people retire, they might buy a van and travel all over the country. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    So if someone wants to travel or go away for some reason, they might want someone in their home to care for it and keep the gardens tidy. House sitters might have to care for pets. Also, quite a few people have swimming pools in their back yard and they need cleaning. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} I feel it is a great way of seeing the country, because you go and stay in a new city, get to meet new people, and have time to go sightseeing in a new area.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} There are websites where you find the advertisements by people who want to travel, and by replying to the advertisement, you can make arrangements to go and look after their home.

    There are some requirements to be a house sitter. You must be a trusted person, so that the home owner knows you will not steal anything. You must be able to go when the house owner wants you to go, so you need lots of free time. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} You need to be good with pets, able to care for cats and dogs, or other pets they may have.

    Some house sitting jobs are just for a few days or a couple of weeks while the house owners have a short holiday. Sometimes it is for much longer. We have had one house sit for six months, while the home owner travelled to Europe.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Then you can travel to many different countries and stay there. One of  the important things to get is references from the home owners where you have stayed. A reference is a written letter to say that you are trustworthy and have looked after their home well. You can show these letters to possible house sitting jobs and they know you will do a good job.

A. I have done house sitting many times.

B. Thousands of people do this all the time.

C. It is also possible to do house sitting in other countries.

D. Generally you have many opportunities to get a house sitting job.

E. You must take a little care over what your description says about you.

F. This is an international house sitting service for all city and country areas.

G. You must have a good car, so you can travel to different parts of the country.

    When I began planning to move to Auckland to study, my mother was a little worried about the uncertainty of living in a place that was so different from India, where we lived. She worried particularly about the lack of jobs, the cultural differences and the chance that I would face racism(种族偏见).

    Despite these worries, I came to New Zealand in July 2009. I have found the place and people very nice and supportive. Soon after I arrived, I realized the importance of getting a job for my living expenses.

    Determined to do this on my own, I spent a whole day going door to door asking for a job. However, I received little response. This became my routine every day after college for a few weeks.

    One afternoon, I walked into a building to ask whether there were any job opportunities. People there were very surprised, and advised me not to continue my job search in that manner. As I was about to leave, a clerk in the building, who had been listening to what the others had said, approached me and asked me to wait outside for a while. Fifteen minutes later, he returned. He asked me about my plans and encouraged me to stay confident. Then he offered to take me to Royal Oak to search for a job.

    I was a little surprised but had a good feeling about him. He gave me some suggestions on dressing and speaking. I handed out my resumes and went home feeling very satisfied. The following day, I received a call from a store in Royal Oak offering me a job.

    It seems that the world always gives back to you when you need it .And this time，it was a complete stranger who turned out to be a real blessing.

    People living in the country enjoy several advantages that people living in the city cannot enjoy. They are in close contact with nature. They make friends with trees and stones. They can own dogs. They breathe fresh air. They fight with strong winds. They listen to the songs of birds.

    This contact with nature is good for health. There are many diseases that are common in the city. but are not to be found in the country. For example, near-sightedness is almost unknown to country people.

    Because of the absence of cars, one can walk more freely in the country than in the city. There are no rules of the road, nor traffic signs to obey.

    People living in the country can easily get fresh vegetables, fresh fruit and fresh milk. And they get them at lower prices than in the city.

    Country life is economical in other ways, too. There are practically no temptations（诱惑）to waste money.

    Country people are mostly honest. They say what they mean, and make and keep promises with sincerity（诚意）. They do not put on air. They do not pretend to have those ridiculous（荒谬的）manners which are necessary in what we call polite society.

    Tim Richter and his wife, Linda, had taught for over 30 years near Buffalo, New York—he in computers, she in special education. “Teaching means everything to us,” Tim would say. In April 1998, he learned he would need a heart operation. It was the kind of news that leads to some serious thinking about life's purpose.

    Not long after the surgery, Tim saw a brochure describing Imagination Library, a program started by Dolly Parton's foundation (基金会) that mailed a book every month to children from birth to age five in the singer's hometown of Sevier, Tennessee. “I thought, maybe Linda and I could do something like this when we retire,” Tim recalls. He placed the brochure on his desk as a “reminder”.

    Five years later, now retired and with that brochure still on the desk, Tim clicked on imagination library com. The program had been opened up to partners who could take advantage of book and postage discounts.

    The quality of the books was of great concern to the Richters. Rather than sign up online, they went to Dollywood for a look see. “We didn't want to give the children rubbish,” says Linda. The books reviewed each year by teachers, literacy specialists and Dollywood board members included classics such as Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day and newer books like Anna Dewdney's Llama Llama series.

    Satisfied, the couple set up the Richter Family Foundation and got to work. Since 2004, they have shipped more than 12,200 books to preschoolers in their area. Megan Williams, a mother of four, is more than appreciative: “This program introduces us to books I've never heard of.”

    The Richters spend about $400 a month sending books to 200 children. “Some people sit there and wait to die,” says Tim. “Others get as busy as they can in the time they have left.”

New App Helps People Remember Faces

    Large gatherings such as weddings and conferences can be socially overwhelming. Pressure to learn people's names only adds to the stress. A new facial-recognition app could come to the rescue, but privacy experts recommend proceeding with caution.

    The app, called SocialRecall, connects names with faces via smartphone cameras and facial recognition, potentially avoiding the need for formal introductions. "It breaks down these social barriers we all have when meeting somebody," says Barry Sandrew, who created the app and tested it at an event attended by about 1,000 people.

    After receiving an invitation to download SocialRecall from an event organizer, the user is asked to take two selfies and sign in via social media. At the event, the app is active within a previously defined geographical area. When a user points his or her phone camera at an attendee's face, the app identifies the individual, displays the person's name, and links to his or her social media profile. To protect privacy, it recognizes only those who have agreed to participate. And the app's creators say it automatically deletes users' data after an event.

    Ann Cavoukian, a privacy expert who runs the Privacy by Design Center of Excellence praises the app's creators for these protective measures. She cautions, however, that when people choose to share their personal information with the app, they should know that "there may be unintended consequences down the road with that information being used in another context that might come back to bite you."

    The start-up has also developed a version of the app for individuals who suffer from prosopagnosia, or "face blindness," a condition that prevents people from recognizing individuals they have met. To use this app, a person first acquires an image of someone's face, from either the smartphone's camera or a photograph, and then tags it with a name. When the camera spots that same face in real life, the previously entered information is displayed. The collected data are stored only on a user's phone, according to the team behind the app.

    Carrots are grown on farms and in family gardens throughout the world. Carrots are easy to raise and easy to harvest. They taste good.

    When people think of carrots, they usually picture in their minds a vegetable that is long, thin and orange in colour. But carrots come in many different sizes and shapes. And not all carrots are orange. For the best results, carrots should be grown in sandy soil that does not hold water for a long time. The soil also should have no rocks. To prepare your carrot garden, dig up the soil, loosen it and turn it over. Then, mix in some plant material or animal fertilizer. Weather, soil conditions and age will affect the way carrots taste. Experts say warm days, cool nights and a medium soil temperature are the best conditions for growing carrots that taste great.

    Carrots need time to develop their full sugar content. This gives them their taste. But carrots loose their sweetness if you wait too long to remove them from the ground. The best way to judge if a carrot is ready to be harvested is by its colour. Usually, the brighter the colour, the better the taste.

    Carrots are prepared and eaten in many different ways. They are cut in thin pieces and added to other vegetables. They are cooked by themselves or added to stews. Or, once they are washed, they are eaten just as they come out of the ground.