Undersea restaurant Ithaa

    Ithaa is the very first undersea restaurant in the world located 5 meters below sea level in the Republic of Maldives. The 5-by-9-metre restaurant can hold 14 people at a time and has a transparent(透明的) roof offering a 270 panoramic (全景的) underwater view. The restaurant was designed and constructed by M. J. Murphy Ltd., a design consultancy based in New Zealand. It was opened on April 15, 2005. Food served in the restaurant can be described as contemporary （当代的） European with Asian influence.

    Tip: Work on technical designs and drawings for Ithaa started in March 2004. Once constructed, Ithaa would be put into the water. Because of technical challenges, limited resources, and quality control problems in building something underwater, the restaurant can only exist for about 20 years.

Skyline Queenstown Restaurant

    The famous New Zealand restaurant offers delightful fresh seafood, salads, roast meats and delicious desserts, while the panoramic view from the windows will attract you day or night. It' s the ideal place for that special night out and the best place in Queenstown to watch the sun go down! With live music creating a relaxing atmosphere and never ending scenery to admire, you will be entertained as you eat in the restaurant.

    Tip: Unlike other restaurants, the Skyline Queenstown Restaurant has tiered (分层的) seating to guarantee（确保） beautiful lake and mountain views from every table.

Revolving(旋转的) Restaurant Allalin

    Located in the Allalinhom mountain, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Revolving Allalin is the highest revolving restaurant in the world at about 3,500 m. The restaurant offers a rich selection. Valaisian platter, pasta and pizza ... all this and much more is on the menu of the world-famous restaurant. Enjoy the eating delights offered in the world's highest revolving restaurant, while some mountain tops slowly pass by.

    Tip: Known as the ‘Pearl of the Alps', Saas-Fee offers many sports and activities: The popular holiday village features the Metro Alpine, the highest underground railway in the world up to the skiing area and the highest revolving restaurant at 3,500 m.

    I will never forget the days when I met with my classmates. Early in the morning of our first school day, our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't know yet. I stood up look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned round to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being.

    She said, “Hi handsome. My name is Rose. Can I give you a hug?”

    I laughed and enthusiastically responded, “Of course you may!” and she gave me a giant squeeze.

    “Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?” I asked.

    She jokingly replied, “I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids…”

    “No seriously,” I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

    “I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!” she told me.

    After class we shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized（迷住）listening to this “time machine” as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.

    At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I'll never forget what she taught us.

    “There is only one secret to staying young. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die. We have so many people walking round who are dead and don't even know it! There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight. Anybody can grow older. That doesn't take any talent of ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets. The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets.”

    She concluded her speech by courageously singing The Rose. She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives.

    Want to see 16 sunrises in one day? Float in zero gravity? Be one of the few to have gazed upon our home planet from space? In just four years' time, and for an astronomical $9.5 million dollars, it's claimed you can.

    What's being billed as the world's first luxury space hotel, Aurora Station, was announced Thursday at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California. Developed by US-based space technology start-up Orion Span, the fully modular space station will host six people at a time, including two crew members, for 12-day trips of space travel. It plans to welcome its first guests in 2022.

    “Our goal is to make space accessible to all,” Frank Bunger, CEO and founder of Orion Span, said in a statement. “Upon launch, Aurora Station goes into service immediately, bringing travelers into space quickly and at a lower price point than ever seen before.” While a $10 million trip is outside the budget of most people's two-week vacations, Orion Span claims to offer a real astronaut experience.

    During their 12-day adventure, the super-rich travelers will fly at a height of 200 miles above the Earth's surface in Low Earth Orbit, or LEP, where they will see incredible views of the blue planet. The hotel will orbit Earth every 90 minutes, which means guests will see around 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.

    Activities on board include taking part in research experiments such as growing food while in orbit--which guests can take home for a super-smug souvenir—and soaring over their hometown. Guests can have live video chats with their less-fortunate loved ones back home via high-speed wireless Internet access and, upon return to Earth, will be greeted with a specially arranged hero's welcome. While enjoying the thrills of zero gravity, the travelers will be able to float freely through the hotel, taking in views of the northern and southern Aurora from the station's windows.

    DepositsHYPERLINK “https://www.orionspan.com/aurora-station-reservations”（订金）are already being a HYPERLINK“http://www.orisonspan.com/aurora-station-reservations”cHYPERLINK“http://www.orionspan.com/aurora-station-reservations” cepted for future stays on the space hotel. The $80,000 is fully returnable, should applicants find themselves unable to rise to the full $9.5 million. Travelers will complete a three-month Orion Span Astronaut Certification (OSAC) program before takeoff. Orion Span has a team of space industry veterans who together have more than 140 years of human space experience.

    The team I work in just has 2 new interns（实习生）, and I happen to be their supervisor.

    After today's lunch break, I saw that one of them was reading things on her smart-phone, maybe on some social network, I guessed. I went to her and said “There's another document here needing translation. Do you have time to finish it for me?”

    That document was not in her assigned workload. But I thought I could let her challenge herself a little bit with it, seeing that she seemed to have time.

    “Yes, I do have time.” She said, “But I'm just an intern.”

    I didn't quite know what to say back then. After a while I mumbled（咕哝） “Right. Yes.” And I turned around and left.

    I recalled the time when I was an intern for the first time. I, too, managed to finish my workload so fast, just like her. So I asked my supervisor “Is there anything else that I can help?” And she happened to have a plan to make. But she didn't have time. So she let me do the research and make a draft for her.

    I was not very familiar with the job but still tried to carry it out based on my understanding and make it as professional as possible. And my supervisor was really satisfied with the draft. Later, she told me “You saved me a lot of time. I didn't need to create it from scratch.” And she told me in details how I should have done the plan differently. I learned a lot about the operation in the process. After that, she had come to trust me completely. I got my current job all because of her recommendation.

    Yes, I was just an intern with a low salary. But I bought a better future with my extra labor.

    There's a kind of poverty called shortsightedness.

    After finishing a meal at an American Chinese restaurant you probably expect to receive a handful of fortune cookies after you pay the bill. Fortune cookies are in Chinese restaurants throughout the United States. It's rather satisfying to crack open a cookie at the end of your meal and read your “lucky fortune” on the slip of paper inside.

    The exact origin of the fortune cookie is unknown. It is thought that the tasty snack was the first introduced into San Francisco in 1914, after an immigrant began distributing the cookie with “thank you” notes in them. These “thank you” notes were intended as symbols of appreciation for friends who stood with him through the economic hardship and discrimination of his early life in America.

    There is an alternate origin story. Los Angeles is regarded as the site of the fortune cookie's invention. In this version of the story, David Jung, a Chinese immigrant residing in L. A., is thought to have created the cookie in order to uplift the spirits of the poor and homeless. In 1918, Jung handed out the cookies for free to the poor outside his shop and each cookie contained a strip of paper with an inspirational sentence printed on it.

    Fortune cookies first began to gain popularity in mainstream American culture during WWII. Chinese restaurants would serve them in place of desserts, as desserts were not popular in traditional Chinese cuisine. Today fortune cookies are not tied to Chinese-American culture. In fact, the largest fortune cookie manufacturer is located in the United States and it produces 4.5 million fortune cookies a day —— an evidence to the modern-day popularity of the snack. However, an attempt to introduce the fortune cookie to China in 1992 was a failure, and the cookie was cited for being “too American.”

    So the next time you break open a fortune cookie and read a fortune about the many successes you should expect in your future, remember that the conclusion to your Chinese restaurant meal may not be as Chinese as you think.

    I was on my way home from work, cutting through the Bryant Park. On that day, the sun seemed to set faster than usual, and suddenly I found myself walking in the dark. I was less than half a mile from my apartment, but the path would lead me over a bridge, across train tracks, and through an unlit underpass.

    Then I heard him – a stranger running alongside me, partly obscured(遮掩) by the bushes. My mouth went dry; my legs felt like water. But I didn't pick up my pace – instead, I stopped, turned, and faced him. He came out of the bushes and said he'd been watching me "for a long time".

    As he walked beside me, I guided us towards the edge of the park. When we reached the bridge, a train rumbled(轰鸣着缓慢行进) past, and he seized the moment, attacking me with a knife around my throat. The self-defense skills I had learned years before kicked in, and I pushed my finger into his eye, hard. And then came the shock: That didn't frighten him away. My mind flashed back to a tip from an old guitar teacher: "Press the strings like you're squeezing a flea(跳蚤)." I put all my strength into that finger, and finally he let go.

    I was shaking with fear, but I looked him straight in the eye and began to back away. I turned to run the hell out of there, but then I remembered another self-defense lesson: Never run, because then you're a target. So I walked away alone – through the dark tunnel as I dialed 911 with trembling fingers. If you ever find yourself in this situation, use these self-defense skills that you already know. They can really make all the difference to you.