Question: Ques: With regular money now coming in from the Guardian column, my regular contributions to other publications and the modest subscription revenue from The Friday Thing, I had been living something of the high life since arriving in London. I had started hanging out with the great and the good of the dot com world: attending launch parties for new sites, going to parties to celebrate them staying in business for a whole year, eating their lunches, drinking their booze and learning their secrets while they tried to convince me to write about them in my column. Many of these online entrepreneurs had become my friends and I'd managed to find myself a new girlfriend - Maggie, a Welsh journalist who was a restaurant reviewer for a food and drink website. This was a brilliant blag: it meant we could eat at some of London's best restaurants and never pay a penny. Life was wonderful: The Friday Thing and the Guardian column meant that my plan to use the Internet to become hugely famous and successful was firmly on track, I'd made lots of new friends, and, on top of all that, I was getting laid and eating gourmet food for free. Even Sam Lewis was jealous, and he was rich. Meanwhile, the people I was writing about were not having such an easy time of it. 2003 was a really strange time to be covering the 'new media' industry - mainly because no one was really sure for how long there would be an industry left to cover. The dot com boom of 1999 seemed like a millennium ago: a period in history as crazy as the tulip craze or the South Sea Bubble look to us now. The first signs of trouble for the industry had come in 2000. As the century turned, so had the market and - to use the parlance of analysts - the boom had turned out to be a bubble. And then the bubble had burst. Question: What probably happened to most of the main character's dot com friends? Options:  A. They were promoted  B. They became rich  C. They lost their jobs  D. not enough information  === The correct answer is
Ans: C

Ques: China’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that a U.S. decision to disinvite China from a major international maritime exercise is “unconstructive.” A ministry statement said despite the decision, China will continue playing a role in “maintaining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.” The United States announced its move Wednesday, saying Beijing’s “destabilizing behavior” in the South China Sea is inconsistent with the principles of the U.S.-led drill. “China’s continued militarization of disputed features in the South China Sea only serve to raise tensions and destabilize the region,” read a statement from Lt. Col. Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman. The statement said that disinviting China from the 2018 RIMPAC is an “initial” response to Beijing’s South China Sea activities. It did not specify what other steps may be taken. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China’s activity in the South China Sea was for self-defense and that it was a “much smaller scale” than what the United States had done in Hawaii and Guam. “We hope that the U.S. will change such a negative mindset,” he said at a joint news conference with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Since 2014, China has taken part in RIMPAC, the world’s largest international maritime drill, which is held every two years in Hawaii. It’s a reflection of expanding U.S.-China military ties, despite tensions over Beijing’s construction of man-made islands in the South China Sea, some of which have been militarized. "We have strong evidence that China has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, and electronic jammers to contested features in the Spratly Islands region of the South China Sea. China's landing bomber aircraft at Woody Island has also raised tensions," the Pentagon statement said. "We have called on China to remove the military systems immediately and to reverse course on the militarization of disputed South China Sea features," the statement added. "We believe these recent deployments and the continued... Question: Why was China kicked out of the 2018 RIMPAC? Options:  A. because they broke an agreement in place which prohibited them from certain military activities in the South China Sea  B. not enough information  C. because Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China’s activity in the South China Sea was for self-defense  D. because they were no longer wanted during the maritime drill  === The correct answer is
Ans: A

Ques: I have waited tables, but before that, our friend group were regulars at several local “open all night” establishments. Our favorite was the Denny's about ten miles outside of downtown Savannah, and we had a regular waitress that was AWESOME. As a side note, I met her several years later and found out we were a major help putting her daughter through school. We had one kid in our group who was a perpetual problem, a wannabe at everything. He just tried too freaking hard to be the center of attention. Well, he joined us ONCE in a trip to Denny's. I mean we pulled up in six cars, all packed to the gills at 3a.m. and took up almost half of the restaurant. We get done, our favorite waitress drops the check, and this goofball says something about “dine and dash.” We all just looked at him like he had grown a penis in the middle of his forehead and was trying to screw anyone within spitting distance with it. This kid wasn't driving, it would be a ten mile walk through neighborhoods that were questionable during the daytime, and he is talking about not just stiffing our favorite waitress on a tip, but walking out without paying? Are you kidding me? “Ryan. If you do that, you will be left beaten and bloody in the parking lot and EVERY ONE of us will participate.” He hanged his head and coughed up his share of the bill, but he still didn't leave a tip. She made over five bucks a head in tips every time we walked in the door. Several of us were servers, bartenders, bouncers, and a couple strippers. Tips were how a lot of us put food on the table, and chemicals in our system. We shared when we had a good night. Needless to say, Ryan never joined us on a run to Denny's again. Question: How long did the group stay at Denny's before they finished eating and paid the bill? Options:  A. not enough information  B. 1 day.  C. All night.  D. A couple of hours.  === The correct answer is
Ans:
Answer: D