Favourable Christmas Stays in London
In recent years, the UK has formed an increasingly strong Christmas market scene. Below we have highlighted one of the biggest Christmas markets, Wowcher.
Pricing
Wowcher is giving a £99 overnight London hotel stay for Christmas for two people at the four-star Crown Hotel near Notting Hill. Visitors can also upgrade their stay: a two-night break for two with breakfast starts from £205, and a three-night stay for two with a two-course dinner starts from £295. Every extra bed costs 20% of the total.
Available activities
Visitors can obtain a fantastic trip in the dynamic West End and feel the festive atmosphere in world-famous shopping destinations such as Oxford Street. While London is famous for upscale department stores like Harrods and Selfridges, during the festive season, seasonal stands arise at prosperous Christmas markets selling local conventional goods for truly unique Christmas gifts. You can also catch the Christmas lights show in Regent Street or listen to the carol (圣诞颂歌) singers at St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Booking
Choose your dates and fill in your private information, like driving licences, passports and so forth for your later hotel registration.
One £99 voucher (优惠券) is valid for only two people. Purchase your voucher and complete the deal.
Wait to reccive a code to your email account which you need to input online later to confirm your booking.
This incredible deal can be used on selected dates between December 24 and 30, 2023, although it only is available to purchase on the Wowcher website until December
15. Besides, the dinner option is available on the first night only.
Five years ago, a couple found a baby owl, near-death, on their lawn. They consulted with me because of my experience with owls and hawks. Eventually my wife and I undertook the task of treating the owl, Alfie, waiting out a developmental delay (most of her flight feathers came especially late that first summer) , and then we taught her to fly and hunt. Alfie disappeared for a week. Then she chose to return, centering her territory (地盘) on our backyard. I put a nest box on my writing studio.
Alfie's first free-living year— mating, raising her first baby— coincided with the COVID-19 that limited us to our yard. Friends said the birds were singing aloud and happily. From Alfie's performance, I saw humans' unrest and worry when facing the unexpected virus. When Alfie and her mate, Plus-One, played in the shade, the daily rhythms and quietness of the owls' world contrasted with our life.
Many cultures view owls as messengers of God. However, Alfie is flesh and feathers: her heart pumps blood red as ours. She has her comforts and fears. She is a very real little being overall. Yet, throughout the isolation to prevent the spread of disease, Alfie loosed herself, living comfortably with her mate in the yard, which certainly inspired me and my family with hope. She is, in reality, a messenger, one conveying the real meaning of life.
To be fully present in life and love, so natural for Alfie, remains a work in progress for me. Alfie is the perfect little philosophical master. She enjoys a freedom unpolluted by criticism or doubt, and a liberty as the air flows beneath her wings. Resisting nothing, she is pure presence, here now. Perhaps I'd long labored toward the place where Alfie was effortlessly taking me, a sense of openness, showing what's possible when we mess up our accustomed boundaries.
Alfie remains our magical light of the nighttime backyard. By day she usually stays in a couple of favorite shaded spots. The choice is always hers. Free within limits; that's the universe for her. It can inspire a life's work.
Digital reading appears to be destroying habits of "deep reading". Astonishing numbers of people with years of schooling are actually illiterate and ignorant. This month's Ljubljana Manifesto (宣言) explains: "The digital field may promote more reading than ever in history, but it also offers many temptations to read in a superficial(肤浅的)and scattered manner— or even not to read at all. This increasingly endangers higher-level reading."
That's frightening, because "higher-level reading" has been essential to civilization. It enabled the enlightenment and an international increase in empathy. Without it, we would suffer a lot. As the Ljubljana Manifesto notes, "one-third of Europeans struggle even with lower-level reading skills." More than one-fifth of adults in the US "fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category". Separately, post-pandemic reading scores for American 13-year-olds are the lowest in decades. And the Washington-based Center for Global Development recently estimated that literacy in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa among those with five years of schooling has decreased by 10% this past half century.
Experts in the Ljubljana Manifesto record the demerits____of digital reading: "Recent studies of various kinds indicate a decline of critical and conscious reading slow reading, non-strategic reading and long-form reading." When you read a book on paper, you can be entirely inside the experience, absorb hundreds of pages of details thoroughly and begin to capture the world's complexity. But online, says Maryanne Wolf of UCLA, we are "skimming, scanning, scrolling(滚屏)". The medium is the message: doing deep reading on your phone is as hard as playing tennis with your phone. Recently, a bright 11-year-old told me I was wasting time on books: he absorbed more information faster from Wikipedia. He had a point. But digital readers also absorb more misinformation and seldom absorb fine perspectives.
In short, as professors from Northwestern University foresaw in 2005, we are returning to the days when only an elite (精英) "reading class" consumes long texts, which is a worrying problem.
Plato believed that men are divided into three classes: gold silver and bronze. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, argued that "the vital few" contributed to most progress. Such viewpoints are taboo (禁忌) today in public life. Politicians avoid talking of a "leadership class" or "the vital few". School recruitment turns away from picking winners. Universities welcome the masses: more people now teach at British universities than attended them in the 1950s.
In the private sector, things could hardly be more different. The world's best companies struggle tirelessly to find and keep the vital few. They offer them fat pay packets, extra training, powerful instruction and more challenging assignments. Private-equity (私人股权) firms rely heavily on a few stars. Firms in emerging markets are desperate to find high-flyers who can cope with rapid growth and fast-changing environments competently.
Few people know more about how companies manage talent than Bill Conaty and RamCharan. Mr. Conaty led the human-resources department at General Electric (GE) for 14 years. Mr. Charan has spent the past few decades presenting proposals to some celebrated entrepreneurs. Their recent book, The Talent Masters, provides a nice mix of portraits of well-known talent factories, such as GE and Procter & Gamble (P&G宝洁).
Successful companies make sure that senior managers are involved with "talent development". Jack Welch and A. G. Lafley, former bosses of GE and P&G, claimed that they spent 40% of their time on personnel. Andy Grove, who ran Intel, a chipmaker, obliged all the senior people, including himself, to spend at least a week a year instructing high-flyers. Nitin Paranjpe, the boss of Hindustan Unilever, recruits people from campuses and regularly visits high-flyers in their offices.
Elitism (精英主义) has its own drawbacks. In their rush to classify people, companies may miss potential stars. Those who are singled out for special treatment can become too full of themselves. It may also lead to social inequality and the concentration of power. Since elitism tends to focus only on the interests of a few, they may ignore the needs and voices of the majority, leading to discontent and resistance in society.
In a world that often feels fast-paced and restrained to routines, the desire for van (房车) life and mobile living has captured the hearts of many seeking an alternative lifestyle. From the freedom to explore new horizons to fostering a minimalist mindset, here are some captivating advantages of embracing van life.
Liberation from Materialism
The confined space of a van encourages a minimalist lifestyle, where experiences are valued over possessions. With minimal monthly expenses, such as parking fees and fuel costs, van dwellers can allocate resources to experiences rather than high rent or house payments. This mobile living is supported by the degrowth movement, which believes that economies should focus on securing the minimal basic needs instead of consumption and consumerism.
Exploration and Flexibility
The ability to follow adventure wherever it takes you is one of the most amazing aspects of living in a van. You can choose to wake up at dawn over the ocean one day and find yourself in a forested mountainside the next. Living in a van frequently involves being close to the outdoors surrounded by the beauty of nature.
Minimal Ecological Footprint
They adopt solar panels and efficient water systems , further minimizing their impact on the environment. People who choose to live in mobile homes believe that eventually, global warming and extreme weather might bring an end to sedentary (定居的) living patterns.
Through the open road, the beauty of nature, and the friendship of fellow adventurers, van life presents a unique avenue for enriching the human experience.
A It's thrilling to travel the world.
B. Many van lifers tend to go green.
C. Living in a van can often be more cost-effective.
D. They'll find a sense of freedom of constant exploration.
E The natural world becomes an essential part of your daily life
F. Better yet, it offers a way to reconnect with the essence of living.
G. The concept of van life offers benefits beyond just a change of scenery.
When I studied in my high school, I did an experiment about how the temperature affected the growth of a plant. That experiment made me 1 that science teaches us the domino effect (多米诺效应) in the environment. It teaches people our 2 so we know where we are from. That day I 3 decided to be a scientist and that will be my greatest ambition in life. Ever since that day I have studied harder 4 in all my science-related subjects. After school I do much research on how I can become a 5 scientist in the future.
One of my 6 in becoming a scientist is Barbara McClintock. She has been awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. At 25 she already had her PhD in botany and after that she started her 7 as the leader in the development of maize cytogenetics (玉米细胞遗传学) and she was 8 to that research for the rest of her life.
If I am lucky and given the 9 to achieve my ambition as a scientist, I want to be like Doctor McClintock. She 10 something that helped the other scientists 11 the thing about genetics that did not just help her generation but also the future generation.
I know I will be able to achieve my 12 as long as I put my heart and perseverance into it. If I am lucky enough to achieve my goal, I will share my 13 with all the kids who also love science and want to become scientists. My future will be as 14 as the stars in the night sky. My future is still far but I will make the most of all in the 15 to achieve my greatest ambition of becoming a scientist.
Delicate, shining and soft to the touch, silk has threaded its way throughout China's history. One can't be certain of its origin, but ancient Chinese credited their own wisdom Leizu, wife of the Yellow Emperor as the inventor.
China's silk is (impressive) diverse in style and texture. Hangluo satin (珞缎) from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, is renowned for its airy substance while Yunjin brocade from Nanjing, Jiangsu, a luxurious fabric often used for royal families, (represent) China's silk weaving technique at its prime. Yunjin brocade (make) by hand in a complex procedure comprises so many steps that even the most skilled artists can only weave a few centimeters a day. Time, patience and experience all play key roles in its heavenly beauty, or its name suggests, its cloud-like splendor.
In Han Dynasty with diplomat Zhang Qian opening up the routes to the western regions, silk graced countries in Central Asia, later (extend) its reach to other parts of Eurasia and beyond. Fittingly, its name marked China's major international trade routes, ancient Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road.
In the hands of Chinese artists, the (thin) threads can weave pictures of great (possibility) and the softest material can pass down thousands of years. As one of the many marvels of ancient China, silk is not merely a type of textile a cultural icon and an embodiment of elegance and grace.
The four mountain climbers were still breathing heavily as they looked out into the distance. The views from the top of the mountain were breathtaking. In all directions, valleys, forests and other mountains were laid out before them. They could even see the small wooden houses of the village where they had spent the night and the route they had taken to reach the top of this small but dangerous mountain. Laughing loudly, they were surprised at their courage in climbing such a steep and rocky mountain slope. Filled with an enormous sense of achievement, the four young climbers patted each other on the back.
As the other three continued to enjoy the views, Jason, the leader of the group, stared at the horizon with a troubled look on his face.
"What is it, Jason?" Sofia, the youngest of the group, asked.
"Those dark clouds in the distance mean a heavy storm is fast on the way," Jason replied. He remembered the villagers had warned him of the unpredictable weather conditions on top of the mountain and that a terrible storm could appear from nowhere.
"But it's so warm and sunny here. I don't think the storm is coming this way," Sofia said, more in hope than expectation.
However, Jason feared the worst and knew only too well what would happen if the storm caught them in the open. He addressed the group in a calm but serious tone, "If the storm hits us, the temperature will fall dramatically. The rain and mist will make it difficult for us to see where we are going and we could easily get lost or fall off a cliff. The wind will take our strength, so we need to get moving fast."
The four mountain climbers packed up their facilities and immediately started back down the mountain. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the storm was upon them sooner than expected. The wind screamed in their ears, the driving rain stung (刺痛) their eyes and the mist made it impossible for them to see clearly.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
With it getting dark, Jason decided that it was just too dangerous to continue.
Finally, the storm showed signs of stopping and the climbers decided to continue their way down the mountain.
