Dear Sara, Can you please help me improve my relationship with my mother? She is in her late 70s, and will probably need me to care for her in the future. I am willing to take on this responsibility but I find seeing her and talking to her stressful because I am so angry ab out what she and my father did to my elder sister. My sister was born "out of wedlock" in the 1950s. My sister's father disappeared and never turned up again. My mother loved my sister a lot even if she was an unwanted baby. But then my mother met and married my father. A few years later I was born. But my father didn't love my sister and my mother failed to protect her. We moved frequently, and my sister was not allowed to come along. She never came on holiday with us; instead she was sent to holiday camps. As she grew up, she started to use drugs and became an alcoholic. My sister is now in her mid-50s, jobless, living on benefits and mixing with a crowd of drunks. She has no partner, no children, no possessions and no company except for her dog. Her health is ruined, though she no longer drinks. I support her financially, but our relationsh ip is rocky as she hates the fact that my father loved me. She has no contact with my mother and is to this day excluded from any family event, including my father's funeral. My mother refuses even to mention my sister. I hate her because I think that if she could manage to apologize to my sister, things might be a little better. But there is ly no chance of this. How will I be able to take care of my mother with this always standing between us? Annie What can we infer from the passage? A) The author won't take care of her mother. B) The author has no contact with her sister. C) The author's sister is living a hard life now. D) The author's mother will apologize to her sister.
C
(Question)
The World Bank estimates there are about 650 million mobile phone users in African countries south of the Sahara Desert. That is greater than the number of users in the United States and European Union. Samia Melhem worke for the World Bank to increase information technologies in Africa. She says mobile phones are the fastest growing technology on the continent. "Faster than TV, definitely faster than electricity. More people have access to mobile phones and therefore communication. More people have internet access today in Africa than they have access to water, clean water, or even sanitation .So we can say that this has been the most significant revolution in terms of changing the African landscape and how people live their daily life." CNN television recently named seven ways of life it says have been revolutionized because of mobile phones. They include political activism, education, entertainment, disaster management, agriculture and health. Another area is banking. Reports say half of more of the adults in Gabon, Kenya and Sudan use mobile money. Rene Mendy sells goods in the streets of Dakar, Senegal. But he never had enough money to open a bank account. Now he uses a mobile phone banking service called Orange Money. With his telephone, he can add or take out as little as one dollar. He can make payments and send money to family members who live far away. Orange Money says it serves four million customers in ten countries. The World Bank's Samia Melham notes that the French company is facing competition from other mobile banking services. "The mobile banking is a huge trend. And people in the West don't understand it, because most people have bank accounts and they have credit cards. It-mobile banking-is the instant possession fo cash at a much lower cost. The cost is the cost of sending an SMS, which is almost nothing compared to what traditional transfer agents, like Western Union, would charge-10 dollars or more for a particular money transfer." Most people in the West don't use mobile banking because _ . A) they have bank accounts and credit cards B) they all have much money C) mobile banking costs few dollars D) mobile banking is hard to understand
(Answer)
A
Ques: Whether you're up for a Crocodile Dundee adventure or you'd just like a taste of the Australian sun, the beaches in and around Sydney can offer you all that and more. Sydney Beach Sydney Beach is located at Sydney's northernmost tip on an extension of land ending at Palm Beach. Before checking out the golden sand, take a quick tour of the houses of millionaires from the art and film industries. Palm Beach Only about an hour from downtown Sydney, Palm Beach offers a long stretch of clean sand and water. With parking near the center of the beach, that leaves the rest of it as a _ population and peaceful location from which you can surf or body board--but take care; without the huge crowds of other Sydney beaches, Palm Beach doesn't afford quite the safety level to be found elsewhere; volunteer lifesavers are on duty only on weekends and holidays. Bondi Beach For the big name beach, Bondi Beach has to be your choice. Parking is difficult to find even on slow days, so consider taking public transport to this world-known beach in the eastern Sydney suburbs. Easily reachable by taxi, bus, and rail, Bondi Beach offers sun bathing, swimming, snorkeling, and all sorts of water sports fun. If you're in the mood for a bit of exercise, two scenic coastal walks will afford you great views and sights along the shore. Take in views from Mackenzie's Point. It starts at Bondi and heads south to Bronte Beach. But don't try to swim in Mackenzie's Bay--it holds dangers such as hidden rocks. Bronte Beach Your second choice for a scenic coastal walk covers a little under two miles and takes you from Bronte Beach to Waverly Cemetery, where many famous Australians are buried, including poets Henry Kendall, Doreothea Mackellar, and Henry Lawson. What can we learn from the passage? A) If you want to enjoy a walk, you can choose Bondi Beach or Bronte Beach. B) If you want to swim in Palm Beach, the safer time is on weekdays and holidays. C) If you want to visit the famous people's tombs, you can choose Sydney Beach. D) If you want to visit Palm Beach, the airplane is your best choice.
Ans: A
Ques: Britain's symbolic red phone boxes have become out of date in the age of the mobile, but villages across the country are stepping in to save them, with creative intelligence. Whether as a place to exhibit art, poetry, or even as a tiny library, hundreds of phone boxes have been given a new life by local communities determined to preserve a typical part of British life. In Waterperry, a small village near Oxford, the 120 residents have filled the phone box next to the old house with a pot of flowers, piles of gardening and cooking magazines, and stuck poems on the walls. They took control of the phone box when telecoms operator BT said it was going to pull it down, an announcement that caused such dissatisfaction that one local woman threatened to chain herself to the box to save it. "I'd have done it, " insisted Kendall Turner. "It would have been heartbreaking for the village. " Local councilor Tricia Hallam, who came up with the idea for the phone box's change, said quite a few people would have joined her, adding, " We couldn't let it go because it's a British symbol." Only three feet by three feet wide, and standing 2.51-meter tall, the phone boxes were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1936 for the 25thanniversary of the reign of King George V. Painted in "Post Office red" to match the post boxes, they were once a typical image of England and the backdrop to millions of tourist photographs. Eight years ago there were about 17,000 across Britain, but today, in a country where almost everybody has a mobile phone, 58 percent are no longer profitable and ten percent are only used once a month. "On average, maintaining them costs PS800 a year per phone box-about PS44 million annually," said John Lumb, general manager for BT Payphones. What is the color of the British post boxes according to the passage? A) Green B) Red C) Black D) Yellow
Ans:
B