Just imagine lying down on your bed in a hotel room with fishes quietly paying you a visit. Yes, we are talking about spending days and nights under water. As exciting as it sounds, we have found some of the world’s best underwater hotels for you.

ATLANTIS

   The hotel is located (位于) in Dubai. You can simply relax while seeing many kinds of marine(海洋的) animals in their natural habitat. Mother Nature here is just a curtain away. Atlantis also has a hotel on the Bahamas, which is as famous as this one in Dubai.

JULES UNDERSEA LODGE

   A very popular place among famous people, Jules is a place for visitors who are often looking for thrills in a vacation. Located on the Lodge off the coast of Key Largo, Florida, Jules requires its visitors to take a course in scuba diving(水肺潜泳) as the gate is 21 feet into the water. It is one of the oldest underwater hotels.

UTTER INN

   The hotel is artist Mikael Genberg’s baby. Utter Inn offers bedrooms that let the visitors sleep peacefully under the waters of Malaren. These rooms are quite comfortable and give the guests a one-to-one interaction(互动) with marine animals.

CONRAD MALDIVES RANGALI ISLAND RESORT

Now many people have a fear of water, which leads to their feeling of being anxious. If you are this kind of people, but still want to experience marine activities around you, then Maldives is the place for you. This is not exactly located underwater but yes, Conrad has a dining room underwater that offers some great food with marine activities happening around.

Online shopping has become more and more popular these years. Women have jumped ahead of men for the first time in using the Internet to do their holiday shopping, according to a study published last week in the US.

For years men have been more likely to shop on the Internet than women, but during the 2013 holiday season 58 percent of those shopping online were women.

“It shows how popular the Internet is becoming,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project group, which carried out the study. Rainie said it was only a matter of time before women shoppers caught up with men. This is because women traditionally make decisions about spending.

Users were more likely to shop online to save time. Internet users between the ages 18 and 29 were responsible for some of the surprising increase in the online gift- buying population this time around.

However, three-quarters of the US Internet users did not buy holiday gifts online in 2013. They worried about credit card security(安全），or just compared online prices with off-line prices, thendashed off to the shops to get the best deals.

“But even if shoppers don’t buy online, websites are becoming promotion(促销）tools for stores”，said Dan Hess, vice president of Com Score Network Inc. Hess said that actually most stores，websites can make customers fully believe the security of their credit card numbers. And most are able to ensure that gifts arrive on time.

It’s all about making the shopping experience more efficient, more reliable and more comfortable,” Hess said.

Getting a cold drink might seem like the perfect way to relax after a long hot summer day, but for most Chinese, the opposite is true. They consume(喝) hot drinks through the day in spite of the weather.

The idea is that consuming anything at room temperature or below is bad for your health. “In the big family where I was brought up, no one would dare to pour even room-temperature water,” journalist Nicole Liu writes for the LA Times. “Doing this will be criticized by parents, aunts, cousins, and grandparents.”

Hot water might be useful to a certain degree, but it appears that Chinese people’s strong belief in its effects might be the result of subliminal(潜意识的) messaging. According to Liu, people’s hot water habit can date back to 1949, when the government encouraged people to drink boiled water and regard that as a way of getting rid of water-borne bacteria (bacteria carried by water). “There were boiler rooms in every place and community, and people delivered (递送) hot water to each home,” 68-year-old Li Zhenhui told Liu.

And the rule of ancient Chinese medicines cannot be ignored — they also appear to play an important role in the nation’s love for hot drinks. The consumption of warm water early in the morning has long been thought to help digestion(消化), improve blood flow, and reduce muscle pain. Hot food, on principle, is never mixed with cold water because that would cause an imbalance of temperatures. In fact, most restaurants in China provide the choice of serving soft drinks hot or at room temperature, as opposed to ice-cold in Western countries.

It seems that the Chinese like hot water for life, and will continue to do so for several generations to come. This is more than obvious from scenes of the ongoing conferences in the nation, where waiters repeatedly serve hot water to senior officials in the conference hall.

◆Day 14 Beijing—UK 

Fly back to the UK,arriving home later the same day filled with happy memories.

Ask someone what they have done to help the environment recently and they will almost certainly mention recycling. Recycling in the home is very important of course. However, being forced to recycle often means we already have more material than we need. We are dealing with the results of that over-consumption in the greenest way possible, but it would be far better if we did not need to bring so much material home in the first place.

   The total amount of packaging increased by 12% between 1999 and 2005. It now makes up a third of a typical household's waste in the UK. In many supermarkets nowadays food items are packaged twice with plastic and cardboard.

   Too much packaging is doing serious damage to the environment. The UK, for example, is running out of it for carrying this unnecessary waste. If such packaging is burnt, it gives off green-house gases which go on to cause the greenhouse effect. Recycling helps, but the process itself uses energy. The solution is not to produce such items in the first place. Food waste is a serious problem, too. Too many supermarkets encourage customers to buy more than they need. However, a few of them are coming round to the idea that this cannot continue, encouraging customers to reuse their plastic bags, for example.

   But this is not just about supermarkets. It is about all of us. We have learned to associate packaging with quality. We have learned to think that something unpackaged is of poor quality. This is especially true of food. But it also applies to a wide range of consumer products, which often have far more packaging than necessary.

     There are signs of hope. As more of us recycle, we are beginning to realise just how much unnecessary material we are collecting. We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb.

D

 Banquets (宴会) are usually held in restaurants in private rooms that have been reserved for the purpose. You will be met at the door and led to the banquet room. Traditionally, the head of your delegation should enter the room first. Do not be surprised if your hosts greet you with a loud round of applause. The proper response is to applaud back.

　　Seating arrangements are stricter than in the West. Guests should never assume that they may sit where they please and should wait for hosts to guide them to their places. Traditionally, the Chinese regard the right side as the superior and the left side as the inferior. Therefore on formal occasions, the host invariably arranges for the main guests to sit on his right side.

　　It is the host's responsibility to serve the guests, and at very formal banquets people do not begin to eat until the host has served a portion to the principal guest. Or, the host may simply raise his chopsticks and announce that eating has begun. After this point, one may serve oneself any food in any amount. Remember to go slow on eating. Don't fill yourself up when five courses are left to go. To stop eating in the middle of a banquet is rude, and your host may incorrectly think that something has been done to offend you.

　　Drinking takes an important place in Chinese banquets. It is likely that the host will stand and hold his glass out with both hands while saying a few words. When he says the words "gan bei",which means bottoms up, all present should drain their glasses. After this initial toast, drinking and toasting are open to all. No words are needed to make a toast, and it is not necessary to drain your glass, although to do so is more respectful. When filling another glass, it is polite to fill it as full as you can. This symbolizes full respect and friendship.

  When the last dish is finished, the banquet has officially ended. There is little ceremony involved with its conclusion. The host may ask if you have eaten your fill. Then the principal host will rise, signaling that the banquet has ended. Generally, the principal host will bid good evening to everyone at the door and stay behind to settle the bill with the restaurateur. Other hosts usually accompany guests to their vehicles and remain outside waving until the cars have left the premises.

C

Many people think that the most popular way of communicating with other people is through the mouth. But what they don’t know is that actual communication using mouth accounts for only around 10% (or even less) of all the means to communicate a message.

Moreover, you can never determine the honesty of people by what they say alone. In fact, words expressed through mouth do not reflect what people really think or feel. The only way you can determine their true inner feelings and thoughts is by reading their body language.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you can “see through” the emotions of other people? For example, you ask a person if he can do an important task. He says “OK”. But deep inside, you are questioning yourself, “Is he really willing to do this job?” or “Does he have the confidence to finish this task?” You can’t question him directly because that would be like belittling him. And even if you ask him those questions, his replies will not tell you what he really feels or thinks.

Then what is the final solution? Here are just a few of the magic tricks you’re about to discover：

◆Actions to make someone like or trust you.

◆How to win in a negotiation(谈判).

◆How to attract the opposite sex using body language.

◆How to increase your sales using body language.

◆How to help you find out who is telling a lie.

And a lot, lot more!

Body language is very easy and fun to learn. With this book, you will make body movements to achieve the success you’ve always longed for. Do yourself a big favor and get a copy of Body Language Magic.

The common cold is the worldˈs most widespread illness, which is a plague that man receives.

    The most widespread mistake of all is that colds are caused by cold. They are not. They are caused by viruses passing on from person to person. You catch a cold by coming into contact directly or indirectly, with someone who already has one. If cold causes colds, it would be reasonable to expect the Eskimos to suffer from them forever. But they do not. And in isolated Arctic regions, explorers have reported being free from colds until coming into contract again with infected people from the outside world by way of packages and mail dropped from airplanes.

    During the First World War, soldiers who spent long periods in the trenches, cold and wet, seldom caught colds.

    In the Second World War, prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp, naked and starved, were astonished to find that they seldom had colds.

    At the Common Cold Research Unit in England, volunteers took part in experiments in which they gave themselves to the discomforts of being cold and wet for long stretches of time. After taking hot baths, they put on bathing suits, allowed themselves to be with cold water, and then stood about dripping wet in a room. Some wore wet socks all day while others exercised in the rain until close to exhaustion. Not one of the volunteers came down with a cold unless a cold virus was actually dropped in his nose.

    If then, cold and wet have nothing to do with catching colds, why are they more frequent in winter? Despite the most hard research, no one has yet found out the answer. One explanation offered by scientists is that people tend to stay together indoors more in cold weather than at other times, and that makes it easier for cold viruses to be passed on.

    No one has yet found a cure for the cold. There are drugs and pain-killers such as aspirin, but all that they do is to relieve the symptoms.

   The interview has been going on for about 20 minutes and everything seems to be going well. Then, suddenly, the interviewer asks an unexpected question, “Which is more important, law or love?”

      Job applicants in the West increasingly find themselves asked strange questions like this. And the signs are that this is beginning to happen in China.

      Employers want people who are skilled, enthusiastic and devoted. So these are the qualities that any reasonable intelligent job applicant will try to show no matter what his or her actual feelings are. In response, employers are increasingly using questions that can try and show the applicant’s true personality.

      The question in the first paragraph comes from a test called the Kiersey Personality Sorter. It is an attempt to discover how people solve problems, rather than what they know. This is often called aptitude（智能）test.

      According to Mark Baldwin of Alliance, many job applicants in China are finding this type of questions difficult. When a Chinese fills out an aptitude test, he or she will think there is a right answer and they may well fail because they try to guess what the examiner wants to see.

      This is sometimes called the prisoner’s dilemma (窘境). Applicants are trying to act cleverly in their own interest. But they fail because they don’t understand what the interviewer is looking for. Remember that in an aptitude test, the correct answer is always the honest answer.

It was the first snow of the winter---an exciting day for every child but not for most teachers. Up to now, I had been old enough to dress myself, but today I would need some help. Miss Finlayson, my kindergarten teacher, Ontario, had been through best snow days many times, but I think she may still remember this one.

   I managed to get into my wool snow trousers. But I struggled with my jacket because it didn’t fit well. It was a hand-me-down from my brother, and it made me wonder why I had to wear the ugly clothes. At least my hat and scarf were mine, and they were quite pretty. Finally it was time to have Miss Finlayson help me with my boots.

In her calm, motherly voice she said, “By the end of the winter, you will all be able to put on your own boots.” I didn’t realize at the time that it was more a statement of hope than of confidence.

   I handed her my boots and stuck out my feet. Like most children, I expected the adult to do all the work. After much pushing, she managed to get the first one into place and then, with a sigh, worked the second one on too.

   I announced, “They are on the wrong feet.”

   She struggled to get the boots off and went through the joyless task of putting them on again.

  “They are my brother’s boots, you know, I hate them.”

   Somehow, from long years of practice, she managed to act as though I wasn’t an annoying little girl. She struggled with me. She asked “now, where are your mittens(手套)?”

   I looked into her eyes and said, “I didn’t want to lose them, so I hid them in the toes of my boots.”