A couple of weeks ago, a few friends and I had an opportunity to attend a dear friend’s wedding in New York. After the wedding and reception, rather accidentally four of us gathered in a hotel room and began to explore the deeper meaning of life and death. What does it mean to live truly? If we are all getting closer to death, is all the material accumulation worth it? It is not exactly the type of conversations one has at a wedding.

While the answers varied from person to person, I was left with more questions than answers and a feeling of gratefulness to be surrounded by friends who were asking the "right" questions. As the clock kept ticking past 3 am, one of the roommates suggested we watch a short film titled "Last Days of Zach Sobiech". The premise of the film is about a teenager’s journey through the last days of his terminal illness. The film brought up a lot of mixed emotions but one quote that stood out for me was Zach’s simple explanation of happiness, "What makes one happy is seeing someone else smile because you put it there." By 4 am, there was this energy in the room that had to be shared! With a few packages of post-it notes and sharpies, we hit the halls of the hotel. We decided to leave short inspirational words on guests’ doors, so when they open their doors few hours later a smile would turn up.

We ended up tagging all the doors until we ran out of post-it notes. The note on the door of the newly-weds properly said, "Where there is love, there is life."

Steve knew he'd been adopted as a baby, and when he turned 18, in 2003, he decided he'd try to track down his birth mother. The agency from which he'd been adopted gave him his mother's name: Tallady. But online searches didn't turn up any results about it, and Steve had to let it go.

    In 2007, though, he searched for the name again online. This time, the search results included a home address near the Lowe's store where Steve, then 22, worked as a deliveryman. When he mentioned the coincidence to his boss, his boss said, “You mean Tallady, who works here？”

    Steve and Tallady, a cashier, had said hello to each other a few times at the store, but they'd never really talked. He hadn't even known her name. Steve thought there was no possible way she was his mother though they shared the same name. For a few months, Steve avoided Tallady. “I wasn't sure how to approach her，” he told a local reporter. Finally, the agency volunteered to arrange their reunion.

    When Tallady realized that the nice guy she'd been waving at was his son, she sobbed. She'd always hoped to meet her birth son one day. Later that day, mother and son talked for almost three hours at a nearby bar. She'd given him up for adoption in 1985, when she was 23. “I wasn't ready to be a mother，” she told him. Married with two other children, Tallady says, “I have a complete family now.”

I was looking for a house on sale one morning. While I was driving along the street I saw something heartbreaking: a bloodied and limping(跛行) dog was half-running alongside my car on his way home. I knew he was on his way home because after trying to get him into my car by offering him something to eat, he just gave me a look and continued on his way to a front yard where he finally stopped. Without thinking, I immediately pulled over and grabbed a First Aid kit I kept under the passenger seat.

With the First Aid kit in hand, I knelt in front of the injured dog which weighed more than 80 pounds and looked sympathetically at him. He licked my hand. Holding a gauze pad(纱垫), I proceeded to treat his wounds. He had lost a lot of blood and I was worried about dehydration(脱水)from the extreme heat.

Although my actions merely cleaned his wounds and wrapped them up with bandages, I had done enough to inspire his owners. The owners wondered why there was a stranger kneeling down and touching their dog and came out to find out what was going on. They didn’t even know he had gone missing. I explained I had followed him, and that he had been injured from what I considered to have been a dog fight. They said they lacked the money to take him to a vet, so I coached them on how to clean and treat his wounds. They thanked me for my help and showered their injured dog with love, promising to keep a better eye on him and do what I had advised.

There was a gardener who looked after his garden with great care. To water his flowers, he used two buckets(桶). One was a shiny and new bucket. The other was a very old and dilapidated one, which had seen many years of service, but was now past its best.

Every morning, the gardener would fill up the two buckets. Then he would carry them along the path, one on each side, to the flowerbeds. The new bucket was very proud of itself. It could carry a full bucket of water without a single drop spilled (溢出). The old bucket felt very ashamed because of its holes: before it reached the flowerbeds, much water had leaked along the path.

Sometimes the new bucket would say, “See how capable I am! How good it is that the gardener has me to water the flowers every day! I don't know why he still bothers with you. What a waste of space you are!”

And all that the old bucket could say was, “I know I am not very useful, but I can only do my best. I am happy that the gardener still finds a little bit of use in me, at least.”

One day, the gardener heard that kind of conversation. After watering the flowers as usual, he said, “You both have done your work very well. Now I am going to carry you back. I want you to look carefully along the path.”

Then the two buckets did so. All along the path, they noticed, on the side where the new bucket was carried, there was just bare（光秃秃的）earth; on the other side where the old bucket was carried, there was a joyous row of wild flowers, leading all the way to the garden.

People often have a quiet, peaceful time ----perfect for a leisurely(悠闲地) walk along the water. This scene is not too different from the dramatic beauty that greeted the first strangers to these islands centuries ago. They were Polynesian people who came from Tahiti in canoes(独木舟), not much bigger than small boats.

They found the beautiful white sand beaches and the waving palm trees, but there were no giant hotels like the ones we see nowadays. The first people came to Hawaii nearly two thousand years ago, but skyscraper hotels were only built in the last 25 years. Now jet planes make it possible to fly to Hawaii for a weekend from Tokyo or San Francisco or Los Angeles. Wherever the people come from, they really want to see the original(原始的) beauty of Hawaii. They want to see the lovely beaches and the mountain called Diamond Head which is almost hidden by the tall hotels.

My son. The phrase felt difficult and strange the first time I said it, and I had to practice it a thousand times. I started saying the words to myself the day when the ultrasound(超声波) told me we were having a baby．

Finally, my son was born.

The nurse came out of the delivery room, holding a tiny, howling human being wrapped in a white sheet, his small hands and delicate fingers shaking nervously.

“Baby Sanchez?” she asked, looking at the room full of expectant fathers.

I stood up, holding my breath．

She showed me my baby．“My son,” I whispered. The little guy screamed, “waaaaaaaaaah.”

But in my heart I heard him cry out, “Daaaaaaad!” I don’t care if everyone in the room will say they didn’t hear my baby say that. I called him, “My son,” and he called me “Dad,” and that’s that.

People ask me, “What did I feel at that moment?” I can’t even begin to answer. I’m a writer, yet I try hard to find the right words. Joyful isn’t powerful enough. Bliss(狂喜) is not sweet enough. Peaceful isn’t calm enough. Happy isn’t tense enough.

After my son was taken away to the nursery, I sat down and shut my eyes. But tears escaped them away. Then suddenly, my 80-year-old father entered, and we embraced(拥抱).

“Dad,” I whispered.

“My son,” my heart heard him saying.

Suddenly the past 33 years folded into the present and I was now the baby bundled in white, with my father standing over me.

“My son,” I imagined him saying.

“Daaaaaaaaaad!” I cried my little lungs out.

At that point, I knew I was going to be a great father. The old man in front of me seemed to agree. He smiled and we walked out of the room in search of the little human being that would change our lives for ever.

Want to help fight global warming? Take off your tie，says the Italian health ministry.

It has urged employers to let their staff dress casually at work in the summer so that the air conditioning can be turned down.
    "Taking your tie off immediately lowers the body temperature by 2 or 3 degrees centigrade," the ministry said in a statement. "Allowing a more sensible use of air conditioning brings about electricity savings and protects the environment"
    It called on all public and private offices to let employees wear no tie during heat waves like the one that has brought Africa-like temperatures to many parts of Italy this week.
    The move echoes (回应）a similar action from Italy’s biggest oil group, ENI, which told its staff earlier this month they need not wear a tie at work.
    The tie makers, however, were left hot under the collar.
    "Italy confirms that it is a strange country," Flavio Cima said angrily in a letter to financial daily IL SOLE 24 ORE under the headline："I，tie maker, am responsible for global warning." "We can now happily continue with our lifestyle, using cars, consuming fuel, heating and cooling our homes at leisure. On one condition：we should not wear a tie while we do so," he wrote. "I should have listened to my friends and become an oil producer instead."
    Italy is one of the European Union’s worst performers on the pollution front and is among the EU countries expected to exceed (超出)their greenhouse gas emission (排放）targets.

Vacation is a time for refreshment. In work, we are often called to think. Sometimes, it’s good to give our brains a rest. Without a break, we may not be able to perform up to our potential. This can be a problem, not only for the employee, but for the employer as well.

    “The main benefit of vacation is for the worker to come back energized,” says Weaver. “If they haven’t had a break, then they’re not coming back with new energy. They haven’t had a chance to step back and get perspective (远景), and come back with renewed enthusiasm.”

    Long working hours without a break, insecurity (不安) about one’s job, and other work-related worries can lead to burnout and stress. Humans can usually adapt to pressure, but not for a limitless amount of time.

    “It is a problem of relating good workers and having them loyal to the firm while they’re there,” says David Maume, PhD, professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati. He says burnout can also affect employees’ productivity, creativity, and effectiveness.

    In addition, high levels of stress are likely to be precursors (前兆) to depression, which can hit both the employer and employee’s pocketbook. Even people who manage to remain productive at work can have problems. If they’re always at work, then they’re not with their family and friends. If they’re working while on vacation, for the time that they’re on the job, they’re not really present.

    An unbalanced emphasis on work can strain family and social life. When you come up for air, you may see that you’re alone, or that your relationships have gone on without you.

Maybe you don’t think animals have certain mental powers which human beings do not have. But the truth is that some of them have instincts, and besides this, I am sure they can feel certain things we humans cannot. A personal experience showed me this.
    Some years ago, I had a dog named Howard. From the time when he was a puppy, he was timid, so we named him Howard, sounding like “coward”! He was especially afraid of thunderstorms. At the first flash of lightning or crash of thunder, he would run into his house and hide under a table.
    I often went for a walk with Howard. Once, as we were walking along a road, it began to rain. I quickly ran to a bus stop for shelter. The bus stop had a roof supported by metal poles. Soon after I had got there, Howard caught my trousers in his teeth and tried to pull me away. At first I was puzzled and a little angry at his behavior. But I decided to humor him and walked away from the shelter into the rain and started to go home.
    When I was about two hundred meters from the shelter, there came a flash of lightning and soon after, there was thunder which nearly deafened（震聋）me. Howard stopped walking and began whining(哀鸣). Thinking he was afraid, I bent to pick him up. As I straightened up, I glanced at the bus shelter we had just left. I was shocked to see that two of the poles were bent and the roof was lying on the ground, broken. The shelter had been struck by the bolt of lightning!

         CANYOUIMAGINEHOWHARDITWOULDBETOREADSENTENCESLIKETHIS? Every one of us gets so used to punctuation marks标点符号that not many of us give them a second thought. Actually, the ancient Greeks wrote this way. The lack of punctuation marks probably didn’t bother good readers, though. As they read, they just put pauses where they fit best. Also at this time, sentences switched directions. A sentence read from left to right. The next one read right to left, and then left to right again, etc. The ancient Romans sometimes punctuated like this: They • put • something • that • can • separate • words • in • a • sentence. The word punctuation actually comes from this idea and the Latin word punctum, which means a dot.

        When the 5^th century arrived, there were just two punctuation marks: spaces and points. The spaces separated words while the points showed pauses in reading. Then in the 13^th century, a printer named Aldus Manutius tried to standardize punctuation. He always used a period for a complete stop at the end of a sentence. He used a slash (/) to indicate a short pause. Over time, that slash was shortened and curled, and it became the modern comma (逗号).

        Since that time, other marks have enlarged the punctuation family. The exclamation mark (感叹号) comes from the Latin word “io”. It means “exclamation of joy.” The question mark originally started out as the Latin word “question”, meaning question. Eventually, scholars put it at the end of a sentence to show a question.

           Punctuation even keeps changing nowadays. New marks are coming into existence, and old punctuation marks are used in new ways. Take for example the “interrobang”. This 1962 invention combines the question mark and exclamation mark for times when writers want both. For example, “She did what?!” or “How much did you pay for that dress?!” Obviously, the interrobang is not widely used or recognized yet, but its invention shows that English is not yet finished with its punctuation.