My father met my mother in a poker (扑克牌) game. He couldn't   21   his eyes off her. It was her company's annual   22   , and he walked her home that night. The next week, from his home in Chicago, he   23  her a postcard:" Remember me? Please   24   , because I'll be calling you one of these days. David".

      She still has that postcard. I'm not sure what made her   25   it. Though he already had his heart  26  her, she hadn't chosen him yet,  27   not consciously.

      As my father often told us   28   we were growing up, it was   29   luck that he was at the picnic that day. As a salesman for a big electronics company, he was in town to   30   customers and happened to stop by the branch office that Saturday morning to   31   some calls. The telephone rang ; it was the   32   of a local radio station with whom my father had done some business. So the manager   33   my father to come right over to their annual picnic.

       My mother was a writer at that radio station. If my father hadn't   34   by the office that morning ,he told us,  35   if he'd gotten there two minutes later, the life--our lives-- would have been   36  .

       A few months after the wedding, my father was transferred East. They   37 in New York, in the house where I grew up.

       Sometimes I think about that, how time sweeps us   38   and puts us in a certain place where we're faced with one choice or another. By chance or by the   39   we make, we leave behind other lives we could have lived, full of  40  passions and joys, different problems and disappointments.

Born in America, I spoke English, not Chinese, the language of my ancestors. When I was three, my parents flashed cards with Chinese ___16___ at my face, but I pushed them aside. My mom believed I would learn when I was ready. But the ___17___ never came.

On a Chinese New Year’s Eve, my uncle spoke to me in Chinese, but all I could do was ___18___ at him, confused, scratching my head. “Still can’t speak Chinese?” He ___19___me, “You can’t even buy a fish in Chinatown.”

“Hey, this is America, not China. I’ll get some right now with or without Chinese.” I replied and turned to my mom for ___20___.

“Remember to ask for fresh fish, Xin Xian Yu,” she said, handing over a $20 bill. I ___21___ the words, running downstairs into the streets of Chinatown.

I found the fish ___22___ surrounded in a sea of customers. “I’d like to buy some fresh fish,” I shouted to the fisherman. But he ___23___ my English words and turned to serve the next customer. The laugh of the people behind increased with their impatience. With every ___24___, the breath of the dragons on my back grew stronger---my blood boiling---___25___ me to cry out, “Xian Sheng Yu， please.” “ Very Xian Sheng,” I repeated. The crowd burst into laughter. My face turned ___26___ and I ran back home ___27___, expect for the $20 bill I held tightly in my pocket.

Should I laugh or cry? They’re Chinese. I’m Chinese. I should feel right at ___28___. Instead , I was the joke , a disgrace (丢脸)to the language.

Sometimes, I laugh at my fish ___29___, but , in the end .the joke is on me. Every laugh is a culture ___30___; every laugh is my heritage (传统)fading away.

A. custom                        B. games          C .characters                     D. language

A. success                     B. study                 C. time                                 D. attempt

A. aim                          B. joke                   C. nod                                   D. stare

A. cared about             B. laughed at       C. argued with                   D. asked after

A. decision                       B. permission  C. information          D. preparation

A. repeated                B. reviewed               C. spelled                            D. kept

A. farm                    B. stand                      C. pond                                D. market

A. guessed                       B. forgot                     C. doubted                          D. ignored

A. second                    B. effort                      C. desire                              D. movement

A. forcing                       B. allowing                 C. persuading          D. leading

A. bright                         B. blank                      C. pale                                      D. red

A. open-mouthed        B. tongue-tied C. empty-handed     D. broken-hearted

A. service           B. home                      C. risk                      D. root

A. trade                       B. deed                       C. challenge                  D. incident

A. thrown           B. lost                         C. divided                  D. reflected

Today, there’s hardly an aspect of our life that isn’t being upended by the tons of information available on the hundreds of millions of sites crowding the Internet, not to mention its ability to keep us in constant touch with each other via electronic mail. “If the automobile and aerospace technology had exploded at the same pace as computer and information technology,” says Microsoft, “a new car would cost about $ 2 and go 600 miles on a small quantity of gas. And you could buy a Boeing 747 for the cost of a pizza.”

Probably the biggest payoff, however, is the billions of dollars the Internet is saving companies in producing goods and serving for the needs of their customers. Nothing like it has been seen since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when power-driven machines began producing more in a day than men could turn out in nearly a year. “We view the growth of the Internet and e-commerce as a global trend,” says Merrill Lynch, “along the lines of printing press, the telephone, the computer, and electricity.”

You would be hard pressed to name something that isn’t available on the Internet. Consider: books, health care, movie tickets, construction materials, baby clothes, stocks, cattle feed, music, electronics, antiques, tools, real estate, toys, autographs of famous people, wine and airline tickets. And even after you’ve moved on to your final resting place, there’s no reason those you love can’t keep in touch. A company called FinalThoughts.com offers a place for you to store “afterlife e-mails” you can send to Heaven with the help of a “guardian angel”.

Kids today are so computer literate that it in fact ensures the United States will remain the unchallenged leader in cyberspace for the foreseeable future. Nearly all children in families with incomes of more than $75,000 a year have home computers, according to a study by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Youngsters from ages 2 to 17 at all income levels have computers, with 52% of those connected to the Internet. Most kids use computers to play games (some for 30 hours or more a week), and many teenage girls think nothing of rushing home from school to have e-mail chats with friends they have just left.

What’s clear is that, whether we like it or not, the Internet is an ever growing part of our lives and there is no turning back. “The Internet is just 20% invented,” says cyber pioneer Jake Winebaum. “The last 80% is happening now.”

1.What can we learn from the Microsoft’s remark?

A．Information technology is developing at an amazing speed.

B．Today’s cars and airplanes are extremely overpriced.

C．Information technology has reached the point where improvement is difficult.

D．There’s more competition in information technology industry than in car industry.

2.According to the author, the biggest benefit of the Internet is that___.

A．it speeds up profit making

B．it saves companies huge amounts of money

C．it brings people incredible convenience

D．it provides easy access to information

3.The author gives the example of FinalThoughts.com to make the point that____.

A．there are some genius ideas on the Internet

B．people can find good bargains on the Internet

C．almost anything is available on the Internet

D．people are free to do anything on the Internet

4.What can we learn from the fourth paragraph?

A．The U.S. will stay ahead in the information technology in years.

B．Many American children don’t study hard.

C．Studies show that boys are more computer literate than girls.

D．There is a link between income and computer ownership.

5.What is the message the author intends to convey?

A．The Internet is going to get firm hold of our lives some day.

B．Children should be well prepared for the challenges in the information age.

C．We should have a positive attitude towards the changes the Internet brings.

D．The Internet is going to influence our lives even more greatly.

Online Money Earning
Yes you can earn money online without any investment or without anytime limit. I have many useful easy methods for earning easy money while we all spend our useful time on the Internet by surfing, chatting, downloading and other work. There is no need to stop any other work. We can earn with or without our daily routine. Here I tell you the complete method for online earning.
First Method
Earn money with “Bux. to”. You can earn money through “Bux.to” by clicking on ads on “Bux. to” site. First you need to open an account at “Bux. to”.
“Bux. To” is a new international and FREE English based service that allows advertisers to reach thousands of potential customers by displaying their ads on our “Surf Ads” page. An exact calculated percentage of all advertising income is paid to our members. “Bux. to” makes money through advertising.
How you make money
You view websites in 30 seconds through the “Surf Ads” page. Once the 30 seconds is up, you’ll either get a green tick(对号) sign or a red “x”. The green tick sign means you’ve earned $0.01and the “x” means you have not earned money for the visit. You’ll get red x’s when you have more than one websites from the “Surf Ads” page open. When this happens, you get no credit.
Earnings example
You click 10 ads per day =$0.10
20 referrals(转送) click 10 ads per day =$2.00
Your daily earnings =$2.10
Your weekly earnings =$14.70
Your monthly earnings =$63.00
How to get paid
If you have at least $10.00 accumulated, you can click on your account balance within your states area and it will meet your request. At present, it only makes payments through “AlertPay”. It will soon be using other methods of payment.
AlertPay is the payment processing solution that we use to pay members. Your AlertPay address is the e-mail address you use to register with AlertPay. You can get a free AlertPay account at http:// alertpay. com.
Method 2 will publish soon…
【小题1】What is the author’s purpose of writing this passage?

Hungry for the brightest students, many of the country's stronger universities are actively discounting tuition （学费）．And it's the high achievers, rather than the needy students, who are getting a good chunk of the money．The practice is remarkably widespread, reaching almost all but the 30 or so Ivy and other top colleges that forbid good grades-based financial aid．Schools are also becoming more aggressive in raising their discounts．At the DePauw University Website, enter an SAT or ACT score, grade point average and class rank, and a computer program immediately tells you what kind of "award"．Only "the real unlucky" pay full price any more．

About 76% of first-year students got some form of discount this year at 331 private schools．Average award per student: $7,000．At small schools with tuition under about $20,000, the average discount is even higher, with some schools returning over half their tuition．                                                          

Carnegie Mellon even tells students it will "negotiate（讨价还价）" and perhaps match financial-aid packages if kids are offered bigger awards at other schools．Much as banks and insurers offer special rates to their best customers, schools are giving the biggest breaks to their top students．Public four-year colleges, too, are offering discounts．

The flip side of big discounts is that less money is available to improve academic programs and keep school infrastructure （基础设施） up to date．Universities that have sharply increased their tuition discount rates have seen graduation rates fall, and that's true even among highly selective schools．They get the students in the door, but don't have the services to keep them．

From the first paragraph, we can judge that _______．

       A．all the universities don’t offer tuition discounts．

       B．Ivy and other top colleges offer financial aid to the high achievers

       C．the needy students get more money from the universities

       D．the graduation rates of the students from highly selected schools fall

The underlined words “flip side” in the last paragraph probably mean “_______”．

       A．advantage    B．disadvantage   C．bad practice        D．good function

Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

       A．The brightest students are not at all hungry for stronger universities．

       B．About 76% of first-year students got an award of $ 20,000 per year．

       C．Public colleges never offer discounts to the students．

       D．Colleges should concentrate more on the services to keep the students      

This passage mainly talks about _______．

       A．the great benefit of offering lower tuition

       B．college tuition discounts in popularity 

       C．the top students in need of tuition discounts

       D．reducing graduation rates due to big discounts