One of your biggest struggles is to remind yourself of appropriate expectations.
1.A.ship B.wool C.wood D.steel
2.A.entertainment B.entertain C.entertaining D.entertainer
3.A.pessimistic B.passive C.optimistic D.persuasive
4.A.Texas B.Illinois C.California D.Sydney
5.A.plays B.pictures C.novels D.games
There are numerous reasons young New Zealanders take this rite of passage—as well as seeing all the fantastic sights and tasting the delights of Europe's food and wine, it's relatively inexpensive. The Kombi is transport and accommodation all in one, cutting down significantly on costs.
There is just one problem. As the Kombis become "antique", these trips are usually punctuated with numerous roadside sessions as the van sits idle, in no hurry to start, while you swelter in the hot sun. But do not let this deter you. Travelling Europe in your own vehicle means no public transport schedules to cramp your style, the ability to explore the quaint, off-the-beaten-track villages where the "real" locals live, freedom to not have to book accommodation in advance—you can nearly always get a campsite and can toad your vehicle with cheap, fantastic regional wines and souvenirs. With these bonuses in mind, here are some suggestions for planning the great Europe road adventure. The key to a pleasurable driving experience is a good navigator and a driver with a cool head. If you do not feel relaxed driving around New Zealand's cities and highways, then you probably will not enjoy driving around Europe. As co pilot to the driver, you need to read (and understand) maps, look out for turn-offs—and keep the music playing. Language is not a big problem once a few essential terms are mastered. The biggest challenge is in the cities, where traffic can be chaotic and elaborate one-way systems and narrow, cobbled alleyways can make finding your destination hard work. It can be easier to leave the vehicle on the outskirts of town or in a camping ground and use public transport. This also avoids paying for costly parking.
According to the passage, the trip usually starts in ______.
A.France
B.England
C.Spain
D.Italy
One of the biggest sporting events in the world is the Olympic Games.(翻译)
Haughom is far from alone. A host of new studies and plenty of anecdotal evidence show that stress in the workplace is skyrocketing. Whatever the cause, stress levels are at record highs. The statistics are startling. According to a new study by the federal government's Nation al Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, more than half the working people in the U.S. view job stress as a major problem in their lives. This year the European Community officially dubbed stress the second-biggest occupational-health problem facing the continent.
Ten years ago experts warned that stress was out of control, in part because of a shaky economy. What's notable about today's wave of stressed-out workers is that it rises all the way to the top. Lack of control is generally considered one of the biggest job stressors, so it used to be thought that middle managers carried the brunt: sandwiched between the top and the bottom, they end up with little authority. Powerful chief executive officers (CEOs) were seen as the least threatened by stress. But in today's tough economy, top executives don't have as much control as they used to. "Stress is just part of the job, fortunately or unfortunately, stress'is part of our character building," Lebenthal says. "But I think I don't need any more character building. What I need is a vacation."
But if you think that going on vacation is hard—and studies show that 85%of corporate executives don't use all the time off they're entitled to. Being able to handle stress is perhaps the most basic of job expectations. So among the corporate elite, succumbing to it is considered a shameful weakness. Stress has become the last affliction that people won't dare admit to. Most senior executives who are undergoing treatment for stress—and even many who aren't—refused to talk on the record about the topic."Nothing good can come out of having your name in a story like this," one CEO said through his therapist.
What is this passage mainly about?
A.Increasingly serious lack of work places.
B.The second biggest disease in the world.
C.The most serious problem people have to face.
D.Increasingly serious stress faced by working people.
What is the biggest trouble?______
A.The Kombis become too old.
B.Language.
C.People may not enjoy the driving experience.
D.Finding one’s destination is hard for the busy traffic in cities.
请根据短文的内容,回答题。
Some Unusual Celebrations
Some holidays are well-known all around the world. Among them are New Year&39;s Eve celebrations.<br>
Also common are days in honor of love and friendship, like Valentine&39;s Day. Each country has its own special holidays, too, often to mark important events in its history. Schools, banks, and government offices all close on days like these. __________ (46) A few of them are really very strange.<br>
Of course, they are not strange to the people who celebrate them. Perhaps that is because the celebrations have long traditions. Consider April Fool&39;s Day, for example. No one knows when or why it began. Today it is celebrated in many countries- France, England, and Australia, among others. On this day, people play practical jokes. __________ (47) The ones who laugh are the ones playing the jokes. The people they fool often get angry. Does celebrating this day make sense to you?<br>
Day in Poland seems strange, too. On this day, it is traditional for boys to pour water over the heads of girls. Here is the strangest part: They do it to girls they like. Other unusual celebrations take place in a single city or town. A holiday called La Tomatina is celebrated in Bunol, Spain. Every year, in late August, big trucks carry more than 200,000 pounds of tomatoes into this little town. __________ (48)<br>
For two hours, people in the streets throw tomatoes at each other. Everyone ends up red from head to toe.<br>
August 10 marks the start of the Puck Fair, an Irish festival with a very unusual tradition. People from the town of Killorglin go up into the mountains and catch a wild goat. __________ (49)<br>
There are also some celebrations that are really strange. In the United States, sometimes one person gets an idea for a new holiday and tries to get others to accept it. Whose idea was Public Sleeping Day? That one is on February 28. It may seem strange, but it sounds like more fun than the one on February 9. __________ (50)<br>
Do you like the idea of inventing a new holiday? If you do, then you will want to mark March 26 on your calendar. That is Make Up Your Own Holiday Day.
第46题__________ 查看材料
A.They bring him back to town, put a crown on his head, and make him king for three days.
B.Some of the days people celebrate, however, are less serious.
C.That is supposed to be Toothache Day.
D.Then begins the world"s biggest food fight.
E.Some people have fun imagining new holidays.
F.Jokes are supposed to be funny, but these jokes do not make everyone laugh.
If this is the case with you, recall your last long vacation. Was it two weeks of complete enjoyment? More likely it was a week and a half of fun in the sun, with another half a week of "Boy, I can't wait to get back to work." If you didn't feel such vacation blues, then imagine taking a leave of absence. You could use it to work on a novel, enroll in classes or just sit around watching TV. At the end of three months, in all likelihood, your self-esteem would be at an all-time low. While all work and no play is not good, all play and no Work is disastrous. We need to feel we are accomplishing something. We also need some form. of order in our lives.
The second and perhaps more prevalent reason for people not to like their work is that they feel trapped. Once you've been at a company for five years and have a spouse, a mortgage and a child, you often feel you have very little choice about jumping ship if things aren't turning out as you'd planned. A steady paycheck can be the biggest manacle of all. People resent having to do something because they have no other choice.
If you find yourself resenting your job because you can't afford to quit, it may be time to prepare what one career counselor humorously calls a "cyanide capsule." He recalls spy movies in which the secret agent has such a capsule hidden somewhere on his body. If he's captured and tortured unbearably, he has an option. And having an option gives him the strength to hold on a little longer in the hope that the situation may change.
Rather than cyanide, your option takes the form. of an up-to-date resume. You might also take a weekly glance through the help-wanted section, and make some visits to industry functions where low-key networking can take place. You're not giving up on your current job. Rather, you are providing yourself with an option. If things get unbearable at work, you could jump ship. Being in this position can do wonders for your attitude. It allows you to enjoy your work since, in reality, you are there only because you want to be.
At the core of adopting a positive attitude to your workplace is, above all, assuming responsibility for your own situation. Most people feel controlled by their environment, but they really aren't. They have to learn to manage that environment so they can get from it what they need.
The first main reason for many people's unhappiness in their jobs rises from their conviction that ______.
A.working is like killing their true talents
B.working at a job is just wasting their time
C.working is not the enjoyment they are after
D.working is the least enjoyable way of spending time
Encompass is one of a small group of funds that have a "go-anywhere" mandate (meaning they can invest in essentially any type of security), and Gissen wields that power freely. Late last year, for instance, his fund had about 20 percent of its assets in gold-related investments. Despite all that, Gissen's attitude toward risk is surprisingly straightforward: "We don't like risk," he volunteers.
This, of course, begs the question: What exactly constitutes a risky portfolio? "When people think about risk.., they think, 'What's going to be the next AIG or the next Enron?'" says Chris Konstantinos, a portfolio risk manager at Riverfront Investment Group, a Virginia-based advisory firm. "That's a really important risk, but it's not the entire side of the risk equation. It's just one piece. "
Lately, the market has shone a light on an entirely different type of risk, one that's far more paradoxical and difficult to grasp. "Sometimes the biggest risk you can have in your portfolio is not having enough risk," says Konstantinos. "And certainly since March of 2009, that's clearly been the case. "
Advocates of this philosophy point to two main scenarios. In one, a traditionally safe asset class falls off, pulling the rug out from underneath investors who were overexposed to it. That's what many analysts expect will happen to bond investors once interest rates start creeping up. In the other, a risky type of investment takes off, leaving those who don't own it behind in a cloud of dust. That's what occurred when consumer discretionary stocks surged during last year's rebound.
In both scenarios, the advantage goes to investors with portfolios that are traditionally seen as risky. The challenge, of course, is achieving the right balance. Many investors can't stomach the swings associated with funds like Gissen's, but there's middle ground to be found. "The right way to look at risk is to look at it from a portfolio construction perspective, which means that in a highly diversified portfolio, there's room for what's perceived as risky kinds of investments," says Konstantinos.
Most managers tend to invest portfolio that ______.
A.has the highest value
B.doesn't contain too much risk
C.is more risky than any others
D.can get more returns
Many bosses would love to have an answer. Sumantrra Ghoshal of the London Business School and Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School think they have one: "Employability." If managers offer the right kinds of training and guidance, and change their attitude towards their underlings, they will be able to reassure their employees that they will always have the skills and experience to find a good job—even if it is with a different company.
Unfortunately, they promise more than they deliver. Their thoughts on what an ideal organization should accomplish are hard to quarrel with: encourage people to be creative, make sure the gains from creativity are shared with the pains of the business that can make the most of them, keep the organization from getting stale and so forth. The real disappointment comes when they attempt to show how firms might actually create such an environment. At its hub is the notion that companies can attain their elusive goals by changing their implicit contract with individual workers, and treating them as a source of value rather than a cog in a machine.
The authors offer a few inspiring example of companies—they include Motorola, 3M and ABB—that have managed to go some way towards creating such organizations. But they offer little useful guidance on how to go about it, and leave the biggest questions unanswered. How do you continuously train people, without diverting them from their everyday job of making the business more profitable? How do you train people to be successful elsewhere while still encouraging them to make big commitments to your own firm? How do you get your newly liberated employees to spend their time on ideas that create value, and not simply on those they enjoy? Most of their answers are platitudinous, and when they are not they are unconvincing.
We can infer from the passage that in the past an employee______.
A.had job security and opportunity of promotion
B.had to compete with each other to keep his job
C.had to undergo training all the time
D.had no difficulty climbing the corporate ladder
Technologists believe 2000 will be the year of video messaging. You will be able to see whom you're talking to.
Also in the near future small wireless boxes will pick up information from satellites. In 5 years, computers won't need to be connected through wires.
All of this will be good for rural areas and countries that don't have cattle or telephone now.
In 20 years you may only need to think about something and the computer will do it.
Constance Hale is the author of Sin and Syntax, "I believe that email has been an incredible boon to communication. People are writing today where they would have been telephoning yesterday. So people are engaging with words more than they have for the last couple generations."
If people use email and the Internet more, it could make people better readers and writers. Some people think the most important part of communication is to make people understand each other better. Will technology make that easier?
The translator also comes in handy in medical emergencies. Tam Dinh says, "Where people are injured it's always important to get as much information as quickly as possible."
Bob Parks is an Associate Editor of Wired Magazine, "Bob's morning begins at about 6:45 a.m. and Bob is kind of mad, because Bob usually gets up at around 7:15 and likes to cut it close with his morning commute, but I look at my radio and it says that there's a traffic jam on 101 South and I'm gonna need an extra 1/2 hour. And so my radio has got a net connection, wireless net connection as well as a good old power cord to the wall and it has received notice that there's a traffic jam and it has calculated an extra 1/2 hour commute time."
Some day everything may be connected to the Internet. Your refrigerator will add milk to your Internet grocery list when the date on the carton has passed. Light bulbs will be ordered before they bum out.
It's fun to try to guess the future. Usually the predictions are wrong. The one thing we know for sure is that we can't imagine how technology will change.
How will wireless computers and Internet services help rural areas?
A.One of the biggest barriers to Internet use is getting wires into rural areas.
B.The wireless computers will be cheaper.
C.People in rural areas don't have anything else to do.
D.People in rural areas already have wireless boxes on their roofs.