Letter One

Dear Editor,

    After I finish my homework, I often go online and chat with my friends. Sometimes I play Internet games. But my parents hate to see me playing games on the computer. Maybe they have heard too much news about how QQ and Internet games harm children. Once I went to a net bar to play games after school. But after that I told my parents that I was playing basketball at school. I said so because I didn't want to make them unhappy. I feel bad about it. However, I need to rest for a while by playing computer games after studying for a long time. I really want my parents to understand that. Do foreign parents do the same to their children? Please help me.

Li Ping, Nantong

Letter Two

Dear Li Ping,

    I think it's not strange for parents to keep their children away from anything bad. Foreign parents will do the same as your parents! They may not let their children watch TV for too long a time, or like your parents, they don't want their children to play computer games.

    Talk to your parents and be honest to them, I think. Tell them what you are doing and why you are doing so to make them understand you. It's never good to do things behind your parents' backs. They aren't fools as you think sometimes! Our parents seem to know what is the best for us. Remember: to be honest is the best way.

Good luck,

Rebecca

    Some people think if you are happy, you are blind to reality. But when we research it, happiness actually raises every single business and educational outcome for the brain. How did we miss this? Why do we have these social misunderstandings about happiness? Because we assumed you were average. When we study people, scientists are often interested in what the average is.

    Many people think happiness is genetic. That's only half the story, because the average person does not fight their genes. When we stop studying the average and begin researching positive outliers —people who are above average for a positive aspect like optimism or intelligence —a wildly different picture appears. Our daily decisions and habits have a huge impact upon both our levels of happiness and success.

    Scientifically, happiness is a choice. It is a choice about where your single processor brain will devote its limited resources as you process the world. If you scan for the negative first, your brain really has no resources left over to see the things you are grateful for or the meaning embedded(嵌入) in your work. But if you scan the world for the positive, you start to acquire an amazing advantage.

    I wrote the cover story for the Harvard Business Review magazine on “Happiness Leads to Profits.” Based on my article called “Positive Intelligence” and my research in The Happiness Advantage, I summarized our researched conclusion: the single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and busy workforce.

    A decade of research in the business world proves that happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: increasing sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%, as well as a number of health and quality-of-life improvements.

    Mrs. White lived in a town of England. Her husband died three years ago and one of her children worked in the capital and the other three lived in another town. Her husband didn't leave her much money and she had to live a simple (简朴) life. Sometimes her children went to see her during their holidays, but they stayed with her for only two or three days.

    One winter morning the old woman got up early. She was going to buy some food in a shop. And when she came out, she found there was much snow in the street. She had to sweep it away. And suddenly she found a dying dog at the comer of the house. She picked it up and took it into the house quickly. She put it near the fire and gave it some milk and bread. At first the poor dog ate nothing and that afternoon it drank some milk and three days later it was all right. Now the old woman found it was a beautiful dog. And she liked it very much and took it everywhere she went. A week later she went shopping with her dog. At a bus stop a young man was eating fish and chips. The little dog became very excited at the smell of the man's lunch and began jumping up at him.

    “Do you mind if I throw it a bit?'' asked the young man.

    “Not at all,” answered Mrs. White.

    Having heard this, he picked up the dog and threw it over the wall.

    Derek Rabclo is not the only surfer to conquer Hawaii' s famous Pipeline big wave break, but while all others use their sight to do it, this young professional surfer must rely only on his other senses. That's because he is completely blind.

    When Derek was born, over 24 years ago, he got his name from Derek Ho, the first Hawaiian surfing world champion. A surfing enthusiast himself, Emesto dreamed that his son would share the talent of his uncle, a professional surfer. Unfortunately, Derek was born completely blind, but this didn't slop his family from believing lhat he could do anything he wanted, even if that meant becoming a surfer.

    At age 2, Derek received a bodyboard and the beaches of Guarapari, Brazil, became his backyard. He was always comfortable in the water and surfing was in his blood, but he didn't actually try riding a wave until he turned 17, when his father bought him a surfboard. His father taught him the basics and encouraged him to keep practicing, but after successfully standing up on the surfboard, Derek knew he needed to become much better if he was going to achieve Emesto's dream and become a professional surfer. So he joined the Praia do Moroo surf school, where he studied under coach Fabio Maru.

    Standing up on a surfboard and conquering small waves is one thing, while gathering the courage to take on Hawaii's board-breaking Pipeline is another. But that's exactly what Derek Rabelo set out to do just months after learning how to surf. Everyone told him it was too dangerous, but he felt he could do it. And he did, earning the praise of famous professional surfers like Kelly Slater and Mick Fanning. Now 24, Rabelo has been surfing the Pipeline every winter since.

    July 16th was a bad day for Mr. Arthur Johnson. In the morning, he set out from his home in Santa Barbara, California. It was the start of his summer holidays and he decided to visit Wends at Las Vegas, then he hoped to go fishing in Lake Mead, 40 km from Las Vegas.

    Johnson's troubles started while he was driving happily across the Mojave Desert. His car went wrong and he tried to repair it. Then, to make matters worse, his attempts to start the car used up the battery (电池) and left it useless. After Johnson had waited an hour in the hot sun, a Canadian driver, John Williams, stopped and tried to help him. When both men failed, Williams promised to telephone a workshop to ask it to send a truck to pull the car away and repair its fuel pump.

    Johnson left the keys in his car and sat in the shade of a large tree. Soon he fell asleep. While he was sleeping, a repair truck arrived from San Pedro (the nearest town) and pulled his car away. Later on, Johnson woke up and thought that somebody had stolen his car. He started to walk back towards San Pedro but a police car stopped him to find out why he was walking in the desert.

    Johnson looked like a man wanted in Los Angels for robbery, so the police detained him at San Pedro for the night. The next day, Johnson telephoned his friends in Los Angeles. They drove to San Pedro and made the police believe that Johnson was a harmless salesman, so they set him free.

    Two years ago, something happened that changed the way I look at the world. On my birthday, my grandfather, walking home with his hands full of groceries, fell and hit his head on the sidewalk. Just as we were leaving to meet him for dinner, we got the call that he was in the hospital. At first, I thought nothing of it, but when I heard the whole story, I couldn't believe it. He hit his head so hard that he had a blood clot in his brain and it had to be operated on immediately. Everyone thought he would die.

    Although my grandfather survived emergency brain surgery, he had complications (后遗症). He could hardly talk and he couldn't walk. Shortly after, he was admitted to a nursing home. Today, he lives at home with my grandmother and is doing much better, but this isn't about him. It's about what I saw at that nursing home.

    I saw something that many people haven't seen, and some do often choose to ignore it, I saw more sadness in those days visiting the nursing home than I thought. In that one place were hundreds of old people who were alone and forgotten.

    So what as to be done with the situation of the old? This is not an easy question, but something must be done. Perhaps groups in the community could assign each member to one nursing home patient with whom they could keep in regular contact. Maybe a school could focus on a nursing home and send cards, pictures and letters to residents. If periodic visits were arranged, I'm sure that for some, if not many, those students would be the only visitors they had all month. These are just a few ideas; we all need to work together.

    I hope everyone to tour a local nursing home I further expect you to do something about it. You'll brighten someone's day, or maybe even his or her life.