If you are planning on traveling, there are few simple rules about how to make life easier both before and after your journey.

First of all, always check and double-check departure (出发) time. It is surprising how few people really do this carefully. Once I arrived at he airport a few minutes after ten. My secretary had got the ticket for me and I thought she had said that the plane left at 10:50. When I arrived at the airport, the person at the departure desk told me that my flight was closed. Therefore, I had to wait three hours for the next one and missed an important meeting.

The second rule is to remember that even in this age of credit cards (信用卡), it is still important to have some local money in cash (现金). Once I arrived at a place at midnight and the bank at the airport was closed. The only way to get to my hotel was by taxi but because I had no dollars, I offered to pay in pounds instead. “Listen! I only take real money!” the driver said angrily. You can imagine how terrible I felt at that moment.

The third and the last rule is to find out as much as you can about the weather at your destination(目的地) before you leave. I feel sorry for some of my workmates who travel in heavy suits and raincoats in May, when it is still fairly cool in London or Manchester, to places like Athens, Rome of Madrid, where it is already beginning to get quite warm during the day.

1.Where is the writer most probably from?

A．Britain

B．The USA

C．Italy

D．Greece

2.When the writer found he had no dollars to pay the taxi driver, he      .

A．asked the driver to give him a free ride

B．offered to pay in pounds

C．gave the driver some fake(假) money

D．tried to pay by credit card

3.Generally, in May the weather in London is     .

A．warm and dry	B．cold and dry
C．hot and wet	D．cool and rainy

4.The writer mainly tells us      .

A．how to make life easier

B．how to be well prepared for a trip

C．how to enjoy ourselves on trip

D．how to schedule our trip

 

Poets die young—younger than novelists, playwrights（剧作家） or any other type of writers, a US researcher says．

    It could be because poets are tortured（煎熬） and likely to self-destruct（毁灭） ,or it could be that poets become famous when they are young, so their early death is more noticeable, said James Kaufman of the Learning Research Institute at California State University, San Bernardino, US．

    The research, published in the Journal of Death Studies, used almost 2,000 dead writers from several centuries, from the US, China, Turkey and Eastern Europe．

    “Female poets were much more likely to suffer from mental illness than any other kind of writer or any other famous women．” he said．

    There could be a more common explanation for a poet’s early passing．” Poets produce twice the amount of their work as novelists do, in their 20s,”Kaufman said．

    So when a budding（初露锋芒）novelist dies young, few people may notice．

    “A great novelist or non-fiction（小品文）writer who dies at 28 may not have yet produced her or his great novel．”

     Kaufman said poets should not worry , but should perhaps pay attention to their health．

1．The second paragraph mainly tells us ____．

       A．how James Kaufman felt                            B．why poets die young

       C．how to make poets live longer               D．people’s attitudes to life

2．Compared with women who take up other careers, female poets____．

       A．are easy to become famous                    B．are easier to experience pain

C．are nothing                                        D．can hardly write more famous poems

3．Kaufman thought a poet’s early passing_____．

       A．lied in his absence of exercise                B．was because of his overwork

       C．didn’t arouse（唤起） people’s attention    D．lied in social customs

4．The best way to avoid early death is to ____．

       A．give up writing poems                      B．widen their sights

       C．value their health                          D．turn to doctors for help