Pacing and Pausing

    Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steve's new wife, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didn't hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing.

    Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, there's no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before I'm finished or fail to take your turn when I'm finished. That's what was happening with Betty and Sara.

    It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel.

    The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping (思维定势). And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in — and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up.

    That's why slight differences in conversational style — tiny little things like microseconds of pause — can have a great effect on one's life. The result in this cause was a judgment of psychological problems — even in the mind of the woman herself, who really wondered what was wrong with her and registered for assertiveness training.

    On November 7, Lewis Pugh completed a one-kilometer swim in the freezing waters of King Edward Cove, off South Georgia in Antarctica. He was wearing only his swimming glasses, cap and speedos!

    Pugh is an advocate for our oceans and seas, working to protect these ecosystem with their large diversity of marine life. When asked why he doesn't wear a wetsuit, Lewis says, "I ask world leaders to do everything they can to protect our oceans. Sometimes the steps they need to take are difficult and unpopular. If I'm asking them to be courageous, I must also be. Swimming in a wetsuit would not send the right message."

    It took Pugh about 19 minutes to complete the one-kilometer swim in Antarctica where the water averaged about 1.6 degrees Celsius. He says that his body can only tolerate about 20 minutes in the freezing waters before it starts shutting down. As he swims, his body temperature steadily drops, which in turn causes his muscle control to drop, slowing him down. When he is done with his swim, his support team rushes him to a hot shower and it takes almost an hour for his body temperature to return to normal.

    Doctors and Pugh caution that one must receive months of training to swim in such cold waters. Even expert swimmers who are unused to freezing water can drown within minutes because of the physical shock experienced by the body. Pugh says he trained for six months before this swim.

    This is not the first time that Lewis has swum in dangerous conditions. In 2007, he swam one kilometer in the North Pole to draw attention to the melting Arctic ice due to climate change. In 2015, he swam in the Bay of Whales in Antarctica's Ross Sea as part of his successful campaign to help set up a marine reserve there.

    There are campus museums all over China that offer various collections and make for eye-opening visits.

    Beijing Air and Space Museum at Beihang University

    Admission: free

    Opening hours: Tuesday and Saturday, 9:00 am -12:00 pm

    Highlights: Included among the more than 300 historic aircraft and space artifacts are one of the two Northrop P - 61 Black Widows in the world and China's first light airliner, Beijing 1.

    Fudan University Museum

    Admission: free

    Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday, 9:00 am - 11:30 am and 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Highlights: A unique collection of native artifacts from the Gaoshan aborigines in Taiwan. Some of them, such as pearl vests, are rarely seen even in Taiwan.

    China Ichthyic Culture Museum at Shanghai Ocean University

    Admission: 10 yuan

    Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00 am - 11:30 am and 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm

    Highlights: In this collection of more than 40,000 specimens of about 3,000 ocean-dwelling species, the most eye-catching one is an 18. 4-meter-long sperm whale skeleton.

    Yifu Museum of China University of Geosciences

    Admission: 40 yuan; half price for students

    Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 am - 12:00 pm and 2:30 pm - 5:00 pm; weekends and holidays, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm

    Highlights: It houses a collection of more than 30,000 mineral and rock specimens, more than 2,000 of which are rare ones like the museum's well-known dinosaur fossils.

    China Academy Museum at Hunan University

    Admission: 50 yuan

    Opening hours: Monday to Sunday, 8: 00 am - 6: 30 pm in summer and 8: 30 am - 6:00 pm in winter

    Highlights: China's only museum to feature the history of academies and cultural education in the country.

    In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh (法老) treated the poor message runner like a prince when he arrived at the palace, if he brought good news. However, if the exhausted runner had the misfortune to bring the pharaoh unhappy news, his head was cut off.

    Shades of that spirit spread over today's conversations. Once a friend and I packed up some peanut butter and sandwiches for an outing. As we walked light-heartedly out of the door, picnic basket in hand, a smiling neighbor looked up at the sky and said, "Oh, boy, bad day for a picnic. The weatherman says it's going to rain." I wanted to strike him on the face with the peanut butter and sandwiches. Not for his stupid weather report, for his smile.

    Several months ago I was racing to catch a bus. As I breathlessly put my handful of cash across the Greyhound counter, the sales agent said with a broad smile, "Oh, that bus left five minutes ago." Dreams of head-cutting!

    It's not the news that makes someone angry. It's the unsympathetic attitude with which it's delivered. Everyone must give bad news from time to time, and big winners do it with the proper attitude. A doctor advising a patient that she needs an operation does it in a caring way. A boss informing an employee he didn't get the job takes on a sympathetic tone. Big winners know, when delivering any bad news, they should share the feeling of the receiver.

    Unfortunately, many people are not aware of this. When you're tired from a long flight, has a hotel clerk cheerfully said that your room isn't ready yet? When you had your heart set on the toast beef, has your waiter merrily told you that he just served the last piece? It makes you as traveler or diner want to land your fist (拳头) right on their unsympathetic faces.

    Had my neighbor told me of the upcoming rainstorm with sympathy, I would have appreciated his warning. Had the Greyhound salesclerk sympathetically informed me that my bus had already left, I probably would have said, "Oh, that's all right. I'll catch the next one." Big winners, when they bear bad news, deliver bombs with the emotion the bombarded (被轰炸的) person is sure to have.

    Jimmy is an automotive mechanic (汽车修理技工), but he lost his job a few months ago. He has a good heart, but always feared applying for a new job.

    One day, he gathered up all his strength and decided to attend a job interview. His appointment was at 10 a.m. and it was already 8:30. While waiting for a bus to the office where he was supposed to be interviewed, he saw an elderly man wildly kicking the tyre of his car. Obviously there was something wrong with the car. Jimmy immediately went up to lend him a hand. When Jimmy finished working on the car, the old man asked him how much he should pay for the service. Jimmy said there was no need to pay him; he just helped someone in need, and he had to rush for an interview. Then the old man said, "Well, I could take you to the office for your interview. It's the least I could do. Please, I insist." Jimmy agreed.

    Upon arrival, Jimmy found a long line of applicants waiting to be interviewed. Jimmy still had some grease (油渍) on him after the car repair, but he did not have much time to wash it off or have a change of shirt. One by one, the applicants left the interviewer's office with disappointed looks on their faces. Finally his name was called.  The interviewer was sitting on a large chair facing the office window. Rocking the chair back and forth, he asked, "Do you really need to be interviewed?" Jimmy's heart sank. "With the way I look now, how could I possibly pass this interview?" He thought to himself.

    Then the interviewer turned the chair and to Jimmy's surprise, it was the old man he helped earlier in the morning. It turned out that he was the General Manager of the company.

    "Sorry I had to keep you waiting, but I was pretty sure I made the right decision to have you as part of our workforce (职工) before you even stepped into this office. I just know you'd be a trustworthy worker. Congratulations!" Jimmy sat down and they shared a cup of well-deserved coffee as he landed himself a new job.

    Being deaf in a hearing world can lead to painful feelings of isolation (孤独).

    Waitress Kelsey recently shared an experience on a social media sharing site that quickly zoomed (陡直上升) to the top of the" front page of the Internet". In her brief post, Kelsey explained that she waits tables at a bar during the evenings, and one night she noticed a deaf man sitting alone in her section (区域).

    When Kelsey isn't working at the bar she makes a good hourly pay doing sign language interpretation (翻译), so she sensed an opportunity to use her skill to make this customer feel a little less alone in the world. She approached his table and began chatting with him in sign language.

    When the table next to his noticed their silent conversation they asked Kelsey how long she'd been signing. They had a brief conversation about her goal of becoming certified (合格的) to interpret sign language in a medical or mental health setting. She didn't think much about the whole exchange until the customers had left the restaurant and she was tidying up the tables. There, on the table of the customers who'd seen her American sign language conversation with the deaf man, was a handwritten note on the receipt.

    "Thank you for what you do; it absolutely matters!" the note said. "Good luck with finishing your degree!" Not only that, but they'd left her a $100 tip.

    Kelsey was moved by the kind note, especially because she wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. To her, she was just conversing with someone in a language that only they understood. Yet to the deaf man and the people seated next to him she'd bridged a gap and helped someone who probably feels lonely a lot of the time.

    Kelsey shared the note on the Internet to spread more love and light in the world.