Some people love eating food right after it is cooked. I prefer food just taken out from the freezer (冰箱). Fruit, candies, nuts, chocolate, cake with buttercream frosting (糖果), even peas, all of them taste delicious when frozen. In fact, I often eat them that way.

    I was a kid when I picked up the habit. In my family, lots of things were thrown into the freezer--finally, two freezers--to prevent them from going bad. Among them were some of the candies my sisters and I had collected on Halloween.

    If we eat when they are still warm, we'll find ourselves taking the cookies more than we should. It's better if we can put them into the freezer and wait. That way we'll eat less and enjoy them more because they are hard and chewing (咀嚼) becomes a slower, more patient effort. That's the point about frozen buttercream frosting. Pm it in your mouth at room temperature, and it's gone very quickly. But when it's frozen, you can enjoy the taste much longer as it melts (融化) in your mouth.

    The freezer treats a lot of fruit kindly. Take frozen grapes for example, I keep a bowl of grapes in my freezer. They become a little icy, and somehow their sweetness is improved. They are perfect and healthy dessert (点心). This is the same with oranges, apples, bananas...You might think bananas would get super-hard when frozen. Wrong! They become cool, creamy and sweet. If you have wisely covered some or all of the bananas with melted chocolate before putting them into the freezer, they will have a double taste.

    As long as you aren't eating anything that truly has to be hot, go ahead and experiment.

It is well known that the Japanese people’s love of fish is almost as strong as a bee’s interest in honey. As fish populations were decreasing, fishing companies were forced to fish further and further away from the shore. Then they had a big challenge — how to keep the fish fresh for longer. So they decided to keep the fish stored in freezers on the boats. But the public did not like frozen fish. So again the fishing companies had a new bigger challenge. What they decided to do was to have fish tanks on their boats. After catching fishes，they would put them in the tanks and keep them living there until they got back to shore. But in this protected environment, lacking predators（掠食者）, the fish slopped moving around. The Japanese public felt these dull fish did not taste fresh, which had an unpleasant effect upon sales. Once again the fishing companies had an even bigger challenge ...

Stop for a minute! Before we go any further, I would like to ask “What are your challenges? How do you handle an unexpected challenge?” May I think it this way that you should try to attack your challenges? Conquer them with a Swiss Army knife. Take the most proper and simple tool that you can adopt to deal with your situation.

Now back to our story. How did the Japanese finally figure out the fresh fish problem? Sharks! You might think the same. Sharks were caught and put into the tanks with other fishes. Don’t sharks eat fish? Well, they do eat a few fish, but they did also keep more fish active and alert（警觉的）. The fish stay fresh because they are challenged.

Now, try to keep yourself fresh by finding your own shark to offer yourself a challenge in your own business and career.

Nowadays most women are fond of shopping online.

According to a study published last week in the US, women have jumped ahead of men for the first time in using the Internet to do their holiday shopping. For years men have been more likely to shop on the Internet than women, but during the 2009 holiday season 58 percent of those making online purchases were women.

“It shows how mainstream the Internet is becoming,” said Lee director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project Group, which carried out the study.

Lee 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 of 18 and 29 were responsible for some of the most dramatic increases in the online gift-buying population this time around.

However, three-quarters of the US Internet users did not buy holiday gifts online in 2009. They worried about credit card security, or just compared online prices with off-line prices, then dashed off to the shops to get the best deals.

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

“Itˈs all about making the shopping experience more efficient, more reliable and more comfortable, ”Hess said

根据材料内容选择最佳答案。

As we all know, graduation is exciting to many people, but my graduation day was not.

I remember that weekend two years ago. My parents and many friends came to   (1)   the celebration. But just like everyone else in my class, I had watched the economy turn from bad to worse in my senior year. Almost all of us graduates had degrees(学位), but very uncertain   (2)  .

The weeks ahead weren’t   (3)  . I knew my small university town couldn’t offer me any chances,   (4)  I packed up my car and drove to Southern California to find work. But what I thought would take a week dragged into two, and then four, and 100 job applications later, I found myself in the exact same   (5)  as I was before.

You know that feeling when you wake up in   (6)  ? That feeling became a constant(不断的) in my life. Days felt like weeks, weeks like months, and those many months felt like everlasting   (7)  . And the most annoying part was no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t seem to make any (8) .

So what did I do to keep my good sense? I decided to   (8)  . Something about putting words on paper made everything seem a little clearer — a little brighter. Something about writing gave me hope . And if you want something badly enough, sometimes a little hope is all you   (9)  ! I put my dissatisfaction into a children’s book. Beyond the River was the story of a little fish, who   (10)  to give up his dream.

And then one day, without any sort of writing degree or contacts in the writing world — just a lot of hard work and determination — I was offered a   (11)   contract（合同）for my first book! After that, things slowly began to fall into place . I was offered a second book deal. Then, a few months later, I got an interview with the Walt Disney Company and was   (12)   shortly after.

Don’t give up. Even if things look tough now, don’t give up. If you work hard, things will always get better. Often our dreams  (14)  in waiting just a little further upstream …all we need is the  (15) to push beyond the river.