Hot Spots for Retirees to Start Their Encore Career
Encore Career: Vocational School Instructor
Retire in: Los Angeles, CA
Ever since IBM CEO Ginni Rometty coined the term "new collar" to describe well-paid jobs that require specific skills but not necessarily a degree, vocational schools have made a serious comeback. Apparently instructors are in short supply in sunny L.A., where there are 13 jobs at vocational schools for every applicant on the market. This is a great opportunity for skilled retirees since, unlike teaching at a public school that requires a state certificate, the only requirement here is that you be a seasoned expert in your field.
Encore Career: Business Consultant
Retire in: Miami, FL
Consulting is a great option for a retired business professional looking to make their own hours, be their own boss, and earn as much or as little as needed to maintain their standard of living. For every consultant in Miami right now there are 13 businesses hoping to hire them. There's even greater demand here than in Washington D.C., which is typically considered the consulting capital of the world.
Encore Career: Tourist Wrangler
Retire in: Austin, TX
As the economy continues to boom and more Americans have extra income to spend, the tourism industry has taken off. This is particularly true in Austin, TX, where there were astonishing 36 tourism jobs for every applicant in July. Between four-star hotels, the noisy rock n' roll scene, and a new food culture, Austin is the place to be if you want to work in service industry.
Encore Career: Supporter of the Arts
Retire in: Charleston, SC
If you're a Baby Boomer with a degree in the arts, now could be the perfect time to revisit your passion for creativity, especially if you also want to live in the center of southern charm. Between the 14 art galleries on King Street in Old Town, an abundance of acting companies and theaters, and music festivals, it's not surprising there were 25 jobs for every arty applicant iii Charleston.
When Randy Heiss went hiking behind his Patagonia, Ariz. farm, the last thing he expected to find was a Christmas list from a little girl across the US-Mexico border. "I found this balloon on my morning walk near Patagonia on Sunday. Attached to it was a piece of paper with the Christmas wishes from a little girl," Heiss wrote on his Facebook page.
When he brought the list home to his wife, who speaks fluent Spanish, they determined that the little girl had asked for Enchantimals toys, clothes, art supplies and various other gifts. That's when Heiss set out to make the little girl's Christmas dreams come true. Heiss said he had attempted to send Christmas letters to Santa Claus via balloon when he was a kid but never received a response.
Heiss sent a Facebook message on Wednesday to XENY, a radio station in Nogales, to see if it could help him track down the girl or her family. He later received a response from the station, which had determined the author of the letter was an 8-year-old girl named Dayami, and the station wanted to set up a meeting between the two on Thursday. "It just changed my entire day," Heiss told the Washington Post. "Instead of going back to my office in Bisbee, I went with my wife to Walmart."
The couple bought almost everything on Dayami's list. They also brought a few gifts for Dayami's little sister, Ximena. They told the children they were " ayudantes de Santa," or Santa's helpers.
Heiss, 60, said the experience was very healing for him and his wife. Nine years ago, the couple's only son died. "Being around children at Christmas time has been absent in our lives," Heiss said. We now have friends for life. For a day, that border fence with its concertina wire melted away.
On a recent spring morning. Susan Alexander, a retired government intelligence analyst, left her Maryland home, climbed into her Volkswagen Passat and drove about three miles to pick up two strangers. She battled rush-hour traffic on the Capital Beltway and George Washington Memorial Parkway before dropping them off at Reagan National Airport. She didn't earn a cent for her trouble, and that was the point.
Alexander is a member of the Silver Spring Time Bank-one of more than 100 such exchanges around the world trying to build community by exchanging time credits for services instead of dollars and cents. "I have time," she said. "I like giving the gift of time to other people."
In Alexander's case, passengers Mary and Al Liepold were grateful for the ride, but it wasn't charity. Mary, a retired writer and editor for nonprofit organizations, used time credits she banked for editing work and baking. Senior citizens who don't drive, the Liepolds cashed in their credits to catch a flight to Montreal for a five-day vacation.
Without money changing hands or shifting between virtual accounts, the airport drop-off was more like a coffee party than a taxi ride. Driver and passengers chatted about projects they've completed for the time bank, and no one raised an eyebrow when Mary said she likes "to avoid the conventional economy."
"The beauty of this is that you make friends," Mary Liepold said. "You don't just get services."
The Silver Spring Time Bank formed in 2015 and has about 300 members, said co-founder Mary Murphy. Last year, she said, l,000 hours were exchanged for basic home repairs, dog walking, cooking and tailoring, among other services, without the exchange of money. "You get to save that money that you would have spent," she said. "You get to meet somebody else in your community and get to know that person. That's a bonus that's part of an exchange."
A deal performed partly to make friends would seem to go against classical economics and one of Benjamin Franklin's most memorable sayings: "Time is money." To those at the forefront of modem time-banking, that is the appeal.
For all the technological wonders of modem medicine, health care-with its fax machines and clipboards (写字板) —is out of date. This outdated era is slowly drawing to a close as the industry catches up with the artificial-intelligence (AI) revolution.
Eric Topol, an expert in heart disease and enthusiast for digital medicine, thinks AI will be particularly useful for such tasks as examining images, observing heart traces for abnormalities or turning doctors' words into patient records. It will be able to use masses of data to work out the best treatments, and improve workflows in hospitals. In short, AI is set to save time, lives and money.
The fear some people have is that AI will be used to deepen the assembly-line culture of modem medicine. If it gives a "gift of time" to doctors, they argue that this bonus should be used to extend consultations, rather than simply speeding through them more efficiently.
That is a fine idea, but as health swallows an ever-bigger share of national wealth, greater efficiency is exactly what is needed, at least so far as governments and insurers are concerned. Otherwise, rich societies may fail to cope with the needs of ageing and growing populations. An extra five minutes spent chatting with a patient is costly as well as valuable. The AI revolution will also enable managerial accountants to adjust and evaluate every aspect of treatment. The autonomy of the doctor will surely be weakened, especially, perhaps, in public-health systems which are duty-bound to cut unnecessary costs.
The Hippocratic Oath (誓言) holds that there is an art to medicine as well as a science and that "warmth, sympathy and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug". There's lots of sense in it: the patients of sympathetic physicians have been shown to recover better. Yet as the supply of human carers fails to satisfy the demand for health care, the future may involve consultations on smartphones and measurements monitored by chatbots. The considerately warmed stethoscope (听诊器), placed gently on a patient's back, may become a relic of the past.
|
A. Science has given us the answer. B. There is no definite answer to the question. C. Weather reports sometimes cannot be trusted. D. British sailors coined the phrase in the late l600s. E. As the air declines, it becomes warm and dry, which is stable. F. The Weather Network has a tip for working out how far away a storm is. G. That's the most reliable way to predict the next display of nature's temper. |
"The calm before the storm" is a very familiar expression. It is usually used to describe a peaceful period just before a very stressful situation or a tense argument. They noted that before certain storms the seas would seem to become calm and the winds would drop.
But why is it often so calm before a storm? According to US website HowStuffWorks a calm period occurs because many storms, tornadoes and hurricanes draw in all the warm and damp air from the surrounding area. As this air rises into the storm clouds, it cools and acts as "fuel for the storm, like petrol in a car."
Once the storm has taken all the energy it can from the air, it is pushed out from the top of the storm clouds and falls back down to ground level. So once it covers an area, it causes a calm period before the storm.
First count how many seconds there are between a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, roughly three seconds equal one kilometer. A good judgement is that if your count is below 30 seconds, you should seek shelter straight away.
However, due to the complexity of storm system, calm doesn't always go first. So, your best bet is to keep yourself updated with weather reports for any predictions regarding a coming storm in your area.
My cousin is nine years old, a little bit fat and doesn't do really well at school. She is heavily 1, and thus has developed some resistance and 2 towards adults, who usually don't put high hopes in her.
Yesterday we went to an art 3 together. There were paintings from kids with disabilities. My little girl has a 4 eye, for the paintings she liked most were also the best of the show. She voluntarily helped to 5 the chairs and table for a sharing session, painted by herself alongside new friends while I attended the sharing, and also 6 helped me to get my bag from another room, 7 that doesn't happen often at home as she's usually 8 to her iPad.
In the afternoon, we went to buy books together. I bought a book written by a mom 9 her journey with her autistic (自闭的) son. On the bus back home, I briefly 10 the book to my cousin, and to my surprise she was 11 interested. She kept asking me to tell more stories about the boy in the book who 12 with small things in life. Even when the subject strayed (偏离) elsewhere, she 13 hearing more about this boy. This is the first time I've seen her so interested in a 14. Usually when she talks to me she describes events at school and at home without a 15 focus. I'm very 16 that the life of a 17 has found its way into this little girl's heart.
I'm very thankful for the 18 of books, for the beauty that my cousin revealed to me, and for the time we had together. I 19 that I can keep seeing clearly the wonderful things in her, so that whenever the not-so-kind world puts her 20, I can remind her how truly wonderful she has always been.
The Chinese invented block printing more than 1, 400 years ago. The original characters were carved on wood and ink was then applied. Block printing is time consuming and (cost) a lot of manpower and materials. Misprinted characters cannot be (easy) corrected. These shortcomings were only overcome after the appearance of movable type printing, greatly improved the speed and quality of printing.
Bi Sheng of the Northern Song Dynasty invented the movable type printing. He carved the Chinese characters on small (cube) of sticky clay. He baked them in the fire until they became hard and movable. In the course of presswork, the movable characters were placed into , iron frame until it was full. He then took a smooth board and pressed it over the surface so that the block of type became even: Then ink was applied and it was ready printing. To be more (efficiency), he prepared two iron boards. When one was being used for printing, the other could be used (put) characters in order for the next page. The two boards were used alternately.
Although what Bi Sheng invented was simple when (compare) to today's letterpress printing; it already bad the main traits of modem printing. So Bi Sheng's (contribute) to printing cannot be overstated.
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（^），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：①每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；②只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。
Last month, I took part in a volunteer activity in a village. We start off by bus at 9 o'clock. After a three-hour drive, we saw the village surrounded by hills. It was very difficulty to drive on the rocky road, so we got on the bus and walked there. The villagers standing by road welcomed us warm.
Cooked with those vegetable grown by the villagers, the lunch was tasted delicious. After lunch, we played games with the village children. Then, we visited an old man live alone on the hillside. We sang a few songs, what made him really happy.
I think when doing volunteer work, you help others and you gain happy in return.
注意：①词数100左右；②可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
