MY NEW LIFE

(1) Five years ago, I lived in Sydney. I had a good life there. I had many friends. I enjoyed my job. I had a comfortable home. Then, one day, my son asked me to visit him. He lived in a small town in new South Wales called Nimbin. I needed a holiday, so I agreed. I didn’t know that my visit to Nimbin would change my life! I knew nothing about Nimbin before I came here. However, as soon as I arrived, I knew it was different from other towns. All the buildings were painted with bright colours. Everyone seemed to know each other. It felt like a home, not a town. I soon learned that Nimbin is known as the “Alternative capital of Australia.” People here all live together like a family - sharing their homes, their food, and their problems. People live together in peace. Nimbin has its own money - called Nimlets. There are many artists and musicians here. They don’t live in luxury, but they make enough money to live on. I stayed a week. I liked it. Everyone was so friendly and relaxed. I stayed another week. That became six months. I left my job in Sydney. Then I sold my home and moved here. Now, Nimbin is my home!

(2)
My friends from Sydney visit me sometimes. They think I am out of my mind! But I tell them the lifestyle is good for me. Nimbin is in a beautiful part of Australia. We try to live in a way that doesn’t harm the planet. The power we use comes from the sun and the wind. We also recycle everything. We grow all the fruit and vegetables we need. Nimbin is an example to the world. We want to show that we can live with the planet and each other in peace. Many people visit Nimbin to see how we live. Some people like it so much that they decide to stay - like me! We stick together like a family. People say we have a “hippy” lifestyle. I prefer to say “alternative.” Not everyone wants the same things in life.

THE SWEETEST PLACE ON EARTH

Many of the world's famous cities are known by some special name. Paris is known as the "City of Light." Los Angeles is called the "Film Capital" of the world. One small city in Pennsylvania may be the sweetest place on Earth. That is the town of Hershey. Hershey is known as the "Chocolate Town." It is named after Milton Hershey. He was the founder of the largest chocolate factory in the world. Milton Hershey built his first candy factory in the early 1900s. During that time, Hershey was developing a recipe for milk chocolate. Eventually he succeeded. Hershey was also the first to produce individually wrapped chocolate bars. Over time, his factory grew and produced more and more types of chocolate. Today, Hershey's chocolate factory is the largest in the world. Hershey used his success to give back to the community. He gave streets fun names like Chocolate Avenue. He built schools, parks, and shops. This generous man

gave millions of dollars to charity. He built an amusement park with rides and trains for the children, and a swimming pool. Over the years, the town grew. Its fame and beauty have continued to attract tourists to this day. Every year, close to three million tourists visit the Chocolate Town. Today, visitors to the city can enjoy a variety of attractions and activities. The Hershey chocolate factory offers tours. Visitors can learn all about chocolate and how it is made. Another attraction is Hotel Hershey. It has a unique spa where guests can enjoy a variety of special treatments. The spa treatments all have one thing in common: chocolate. Guests can take a "whipped cocoa bath." Instead of an ordinary bubble bath, guests bathe in foaming chocolate milk. To relax tired muscles, guests can choose a "cocoa massage." This treatment uses massage oils made from chocolate. Guests can enjoy cocoa beauty treatments of every type imaginable. Milton Hershey created some of the most popular chocolate products in the United States. He was a giving and generous man, and he was able to help many people.

DESIGNER BRANDS

(1) Although I follow fashion, I hate the phrase ‘must-have’. If I read that Ugg boots or Prada sunglasses are the latest ‘must-haves’, my immediate reaction is to think, ‘Why must I have them?’ Why should I fall for the designer’s influencing tactics and methods, which only aim to increase his bank balance while mine is decreasing?’
(2) Designer brands, in general, are for people who are too insecure to trust their own tastes. These people decide that everything at Prada must be ‘cool’, so if you shop there, you can’t go wrong. I find it much more satisfying to get into one of the cheap chain stores on High Street and buy a copy of the designer’s clothes for a tenth of the price. OK, you have to use your skill to find the correct piece of clothing that looks good on you. But it’s worth it! It’s like finding a piece of gold in a river. This gives you immense satisfaction.
(3) Which is why, according to a survey done by a British bank, nowadays young people with money are leaving the designer shops and, as an alternative, buying their clothes in chain stores, second-hand shops, and in markets. This is the best news I’ve heard all week. It means that young people have the confidence to trust their own judgment. They are prepared to take risks to look individual and not mass-produced.
(4) That has always been my shopping philosophy. The very high prices in designer shops leave me open-mouthed. Even if I had the money, I would think of all the other things I could spend it on!

SOCIAL INFLUENCE

(1) Of the many influences on human behaviour, social influences are the most pervasive. The main influence on people is people. When we hear the term social influence, most of us think of deliberate attempts of someone to persuade us to alter our actions or change our opinions. The television commercial comes to mind. But many of the most important forms of social influence are unintentional, and some of the effects we humans have on one another occur by virtue of the simple fact that we are in each other's physical presence.
(2) In 1898, a psychologist named Triplett made an interesting observation. In looking over speed records of bicycle racers, he noticed that better speed records were obtained when cyclists raced against each other than when they raced against the clock. This observation led Triplett to perform the first controlled laboratory experiment ever conducted in social psychology. He instructed children to turn a wheel as fast as possible for a certain period of time. Sometimes two children worked at the same time in the same room, each with his own wheel; at other times, they worked alone. The results proved his theory: Children worked faster in co-action, that is, when another child doing the same thing was present, than when they worked alone.
(3) Soon after Triplett's experiment on co-action, it was discovered that the mere presence of a passive spectator (an audience rather than a co-actor) was sufficient to facilitate performance. This was discovered accidentally in an experiment on muscular effort and fatigue by Meumann (1904), who found that subjects lifted a weight faster and farther whenever the psychologist was in the room. Later experiments have confirmed this audience effect.
(4) It appears that co-action and audience effects in humans are caused by the individual's "cognitive" concerns about competition and the evaluation of performance that others will make. We learn as we grow up that others praise or criticize, reward or punish our performances, and this raises our drive level when we perform before others. Thus, even the early studies of co-action found that if all elements of competition are removed, co-action effects are reduced or eliminated. Similarly, audience effects are a function of the subject's interpretation of how much he is being evaluated.