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The latest statistics show the number of people attending cinemas is steadily decreasing. At the same time, the number of television viewers is constantly increasing. According to the experts, the explanation for this is threefold.

First of all, over the past few decades, television sets have appeared in nearly every home in most countries. Second, most movies are readily available on DVDs or VCDs and can be viewed in the comfort of people's homes. The third factor is the rising cost of film making, which has raised the cost of a cinema ticket.

However, the movie theater industry continues to thrive, as there will always be those who prefer to enjoy the full cinema experience. No matter how convenient it is to watch a great film at home on TV, there is nothing quite as exciting and grand as dressing up and going out to enjoy a movie on the "Big Screen".

Tactical' savings" involves lots of little details, but doesn't require much thinking. Strategic savings is a much broader concept. It doesn't deal in much detail. Rather, it's all about how you think about saving and where it fits into your financial life. It requires you to decide how you're going to save and how you're going to spend. At its heart, it is all about i concept called "opportunity costs'5," a fancy' term for deciding which of the two things you can do with money you're going to do: spend it or save it. '

We all think we're reasonably familiar with what things cost. Usually, there's a price tag or we get a bill that tells us the cost. If you practice my version of tactical savings, what something costs is Jie amount you write down each time you spend money on some-King. But the truth is, the cost of most things is considerably iigher than what the price tag says it costs. That’s because each ime you elect to spend a dollar, you’re simultaneously electing not 3 investing that dollar. And a dollar invested is almost always worth lore than a dollar spent. The only exception is if the thing you pent the dollar for increases in value. The increase can be explicit: An antique desk or a fine painting may appreciate in value over le years. Or it can be implicit' : a dollar spent for education will kely provide excellent, though unknown, returns. But most lings on which we spend money- clothing, entertainment, autopsies—-either depreciate" in value or provide only a brief sense of internment. If a dollar is saved and subsequently invested in a

long-term portfolio9, however, it will almost certainly become more valuable over time. How much more valuable will depend on the nature of the investment. The concept of opportunity costs measures the cost of spending as the sum total of the actual pricfc paid for something plus the forgone1" gains that would have accrued" had that dollar been invested rather than spent. '"

A few years ago I wrote a book which dealt in part with A .j^.- the difficulties of the English1 in India. Feeling that they would have had no difficulties in India themselves, the Americans read the book freely. The more they read it the better it made them feel, and a cheque to the author was the result. I bought a wood with the cheque. It is not a large wood—it contains scarcely any trees, and it is intersected"',( blast it/v, by a public footpath. Still, it is the first property that I have owned, so it is right that other people should participate in my shame, and should ask themselves, in accents that will vary in horror, this very important question; What is the effect of property upon the character? Don't let's touch economics; the effect of private ownership upon the community as a whole is another question—a more important question, perhaps, but another one. ' Let's keep to psychology. If you own things, what's their effect on you? What's the effect on me of my wood?

In the first place, it makes me feel heavy. Property does have this effect. Property produces men of weight, and it was a man of weight who failed to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. He was not wicked, that unfortunate millionaire in the parable, he was only stout: he sickout in front, not to mention behind, and as he wedged himself this way and that in the crystalline entrance and bruised his well-fed flairs he saw beneath him a comparatively slim camel passing through the eye of a needle and being woven into__the robe of God. '

The Gospels all through couple'1 stoutness and slowness. They point out what is perfectly obvious, yet seldom realized: that if you have a lot of things you cannot move about a lot, that furniture requires dusting, dusters require servants, servants require insurance stamps, and the whole tangle of them makes you think twice before you accept an invitation to dinner or go for a bathe in the Jordan.7 Sometimes the Gospels proceed further and say with Tolstoy that property is sinful; they approach the difficult ground of asceticism ( here, where I cannot follow them. But as to the immediate effects of property on people, they just show straightforward logic. It produces men of weight. Men of weight cannot, by definition, move like the lightning from the East unto the West, and the ascent of a fourteen stone bishop into a pulpit is thus the exact the coming of the Son of Man.9 My wood makes me feel heavy.

An agency agreement differs from a sales contract in that it does not involve the sale of goods. An agent only solicits orders for you and you have to sign separate contracts with the buyer. When the business is completed, the agent collects commissions. So an agency agreement spells the obligations and rights of the agent and the principal. The clauses discussed below are some of the essential articles in an exclusive agency agreement.

1. Scope of products

This clause is necessary for product exclusivity. You shall list the products, the product under a brand name if brand name is involved. In the latter case, you should state clearly who owns the brand name.

2. Coverage

For an exclusive agency agreement, there must be a definition of coverage, i.e. the named territory. The territory may be a country, a region, say North America, or the entire world. Usually it is troublesome to define an area within a country as the territory. For instance, if you define California as the exclusive area for an agent, you may find it very difficult to keep other distributors, say one in Texas, from penetrating this market.

3. Minimum Sales Volume

Because the exclusiveness forbids you to nominate other agents working for you in the territory, it is important for you to stipulate the minimum volume of business. If you also sell directly to the territory, you shall stipulate clearly whether the volume of your direct sales should be included in or excluded from the minimum volume.

4. Commission

The commission is the reward for the agents' work. The usual percentage is 5-10. The percentage depends on the amount of work involved, the nature of the market and of the product. You should stipulate very clearly whether the basis for calculating commission is on FOB or GIF value. You should also stipulate when the commission is to be paid. Usually, commission is paid after execution of the contract, i.e. after the exporter receives the proceeds. Commission is usually settled on monthly or quarterly basis.

5. Advertising and Promotion

This clause spells out the obligation of the agent to advertise and promote the products and promotion can be specified in terms of money to be spent or other specific actions.

6. The Duration and Termination of the Agreement

The duration of an exclusive agency agreement may be one year or several years. It is usually automatically renewed if the duration is only one year. If either party wants to terminate the agreement, a notice shall be given in advance.

7. Compensation for the Injured Party

If an agent is not performing as agreed, the principal can terminate the agreement. On the other hand, if the principal wants to terminate the agreement with no faults on the part of the agent, the principal has to compensate the agent. The compensation may be one year's commission or even more if the agreement has lasted for many years.

If you have a credit card, you can buy a car, eat a dinner, take a trip, and even get a haircut by charging the cost to your account. In this way you can pay for purchases a month or two later, without any extra charge. Or you may choose to spread out your payments over several months and pay only part of the total amount each month. If you do this, the credit card company or the bank who sponsors the credit card will add a small service charge to your total bill. This is very convenient for the customer. With the credit card in your wallet or purse, you don't have to carry much cash. This saves your trips to the bank to cash checks or withdraw cash. Also, if you carry credit cards instead of a lot of cash, you don't have to be concerned about losing your money through carelessness or theft. The card user only has to worry about paying the final bill. This of course can be a problem if you charge more than you can pay for.

Credit cards are a big business, Americans spend $ 16 billion a year on cards and there are already 590 million of them in circulation. Many banks sponsor their own credit companies and issue cards free to their customers. Other credit companies charge their members annual dues. The stores that accept credit cards must pay a small fee to the credit card company—a percentage of purchase price of the merchandise or service. In return, the credit card company promptly pays the store for the merchandise or service. Credit card companies make a profit from the fees they charge the store and also from the fees collected from customers who pay for their charges in monthly installments. However, credit card companies sometimes have problems collecting overdue payments from unreliable customers. Also, the USL of Molen. lost, or counterfeit' credit cards by cnmmals has become a big headache for the credit card company that is responsible for the goods and services illegally charged to \\< customers' account'.

Yet. in many ways, the big loser in the credii eard system is not the credit card company, the store, or the card user, but rather the general customer. The store makes up for the fees it pays to the credit card company by increasing prices for goods and services. Stores may have more sales if they accept cards, hut the added cost to the store with credit cards are accepted instead of cash, is actually passed on to all customer1- m higher price's. In this way the cash customer suffer.-, for the convenience the credit card customer enjoys.

Many feel that it will only be a mailer of time before credit cards completely replace cash and checks for both individuals and businesses. In such a credit card economy there would be only one "super credit-card bank-company" and each individual would be given his or her card. Each person's Social Security number would be used as the card number. Firms would use their Federal identification number. Thus, every individual would be able to pay for everything by credit card newspapers- cab fares, donations, tools, theater admissions, tuition, children's allowances, everything. All salary payments would lie credited lo each individual's account with the "super-credit card-hank company" which would pay one s bills, deduct state and federal taxes, and deposit what's left if anything -into a savings account. ' Just think of the convenience of getting rid of cash and checks and even eliminating loose change.

It's said that history repeats itself now and again. To that excellent saying I would like to add this: People in one period of time are largely copies of people who lived at some other time in history.

There are things in your memory that will never become lost. One such memory is that when I was a small boy, I never had enough to eat, like everyone in this country at the time. Another is that my father told me one day that some of the people had so much food that they had to dump some of it into the sea. " That is one of the many evils in a capitalist society," my father concluded, never wanting to miss an opportunity to teach me a useful lesson.

Just yesterday I heard my father, now an unsuccessful businessman selling vegetables and fruits, complain that "nothing is a profitable commodity nowadays in China; our people have simple produced too much. "

This is only one instance of what is happening in this country. This will be history. And this piece of history is largely a copy of what happened in another part of the world, to people living at another time.

As a result of history repeating itself, new people are largely copies of those who lived in earlier times. They complain like our great fathers, they make mistakes our great-great fathers used to, and they expect a future that was equally dear to our great-great-great fathers.

The other day a cousin of mine arrived in Beijing from our home village. He said some people there treat the villagers so mercilessly that they want to "kill" them. As for what they could do, he said they could do al-most nothing except expect changes. At the end my cousin exclaimed, " have you ever imagined about such people and things?" I didn't answer the question, for I was thinking about historical stories about people and happenings in the first part of the last century, in the pre-revolution years.

And, unlike my cousin, I don't get surprised at such people and things, because I have benefited more from the study of history than him. As a result, I have broken down illusions the common people always produce in their minds, and have realized that my father will complain, that my cousin will get disappointed, that village heads in my home village will "treat the villagers so mercilessly" that some villagers will want to "kill" some of these suppressors, and, more importantly, that many of them will expect changes, just like those "people who lived at any other time in history. "

It has been a tradition to "require" students to take courses that are not relevant to their future jobs. And, the further we look back, the more rigorous we find this requirement. Centuries ago, colleges and universities seldom concerned themselves about jobs their students were going to take up. Those were times when many students went to school not in order to take up a job after graduation, but for the sake of the dignity and privileges that went only to people who had received an education. Accordingly, education functioned chiefly to mold students into gallant gentlemen and virtuous ladies. In compliance with this requirement, courses of the arts and humanities, such as grammar, logic and rhetoric, were required, and those of "science" had little to do with scientific research work. Indeed, such education was never intended to prepare students for jobs, but in many cases influenced them in such a way that practical jobs were looked down upon by them. And this to a large degree explains why irrelevant courses were welcome and could prevail in the school.

After the Middle Ages, especially after the industrial revolution, great changes took place in education. From then on, colleges and universities started to offer courses directly related to jobs. Thus there were courses intended to teach students how to cook, take care of patients, and construct roads, for example. And some colleges were entirely aimed at preparing students for the job of teaching, nursing, etc. , and special-purposed schools functioned to help students become professionally capable of doing jobs in their "chosen fields," such as law and commerce. In these, courses were generally relevant and practical.

In the last half of the last century, even greater changes took place in education. Ever since the schools are no longer places for privileged people, but are open to people from all classes. And drastic changes occurred in the past 30 years, when people with money can go up to any university, including some that should accommodate only the truly "privileged" (i. e. , talented) people. With its reputation and dignity thus reduced, the school starts to remember its good, old days of "education for education's sake. " And, no doubt, the idea of " requiring students to take courses in a variety of disciplines — that is, courses ranging from the arts and the humanities to the physical and biological sciences" originates in that inclination.

Nostalgia is the matter. And nostalgia is always irrelevant (if not "opposed") to reality. Nowadays the most obvious reality is that 90 out of 100 students come to school in order to get them prepared for the jobs they have in view. And they "pay" for that preparation. Then it is not that we should "require" students to learn this and that; it is that we should provide them with what they have paid for, i. e. , "those courses that will help prepare them for jobs in their chosen fields. " After that, if we can afford to, we can politely suggest to them: would you like to have something else, such as " courses ranging from the arts and the humanities to the physical and biological sciences?"

I am interested in catching beetles and other insects. I often collect them, some of which are very pretty. I also like little lizards, which are nimble, red or yellow, with black dots on their backs. But I prefer the colorful butterflies most. They have bluish and silk-like wings and fly gaily about. Sometimes five or six of them sit on a single stalk, fold their wings and go to sleep; the stalk bends a little under their weight. I used to catch them to make beautiful specimens. However, I know many species of them have disappeared. So now we must protect them and give them the chance to live on the earth with us forever.

The way people arrange and use public spaces also reflects cultural attitude toward space and privacy. Businesspeople from the United States who go to Japan or China often comment on how crowded the cities are and state that there just is not enough breathing space. That may be true by U.S. standards, but the Japanese and Chinese may interpret the conditions differently. Two people from different cultures may look at the same space yet come to different conclusions, as the following example illustrates.

Numerous articles have illustrated the prime example of crowdedness in Japan.- rush hour on the subway in Tokyo. They usually show a picture of a person whose job it is to push people into the train so that the doors can close. (This phenomenon has been exaggerated greatly in the American press, however. In 1989 only two stations in all of Tokyo had pushers, and only during rush hours.) When looking at these pictures one wonders how the throngs of people fit the cultural emphasis on personal distance and private space. How do the Japanese cope with that? Many Japanese do not like the crowded conditions, and increasingly people are moving from Tokyo back to their hometowns to have more space.

Most Japanese people have found a way to cope with the overcrowded public space of the subway system. In this environment, filled with people pushing and shoving one another, the Japanese riders become islands. Each is alone as long as he does not acknowledge any of the other people; the others do not really exist in his space. As was pointed out earlier, space becomes a psychological phenomenon. The Chinese deal with crowded public spaces in a similar fashion.

People from the United States carry their idea of individuality over into public spaces. They consider it their right to walk and play on the grass in the park. After all, it is their park; their taxes paid for it. Government buildings in the United States are open to the public. Anyone can go into the Capitol in Washington or the various state capitols. In no other country is the residence of the president open to the public. Access has become tighter since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but Americans still see it as their right to have access to public buildings. Schloss Bellevue, 10 Downing Street, and the Elysee Palace are all closed to the public. In the United States the right to access is considered important. In contrast, ordinary citizens are not allowed entry into the new Shanghai city hall. It is where the mayor and vice mayors, as well as all the key officials for the city, work. Ordinary people have no business there and are turned away by security officers.

The Germans organize their public spaces in the same way they organize their private lives. Alles mufS seine Or dnung haben (everything must have its order). Order is an overriding concern, and detailed provisions are made to guarantee that order. Germans tend to not have problems with this control because they grew up with an emphasis on order. As a result, parks tend to be clean and neat; the grass is not trampled down. This order is achieved through the use of numerous signs; Betreten des Rasens verboten (It is forbidden to step on the grass) is typical and is enforced strictly. For most Germans there is nothing wrong with the content or tone of the rules, most of which are issued as clear orders in a negative tone. The emphasis is on clarity rather than friendliness. However, during the last decade the universal acceptance of the tight regulation of public spaces began breaking down. One of the side effects has been more litter in parks and plazas. This change in behavior indicates that the nonverbal language of space can change over time. The study of nonverbal communication therefore must be an ongoing activity.

Germans tend to be very aggressive in crowds. The British queue (line up) at the bus stop, in stores, and at theaters. Theatergoers in London, for example, follow strict unwritten rules on queuing to get tickets; it is expected that everyone will follow the unwritten honor system. Germans, in contrast, form throngs and push and shove without any order at all, and they are surprised at the voluntary order of the British. One evening during rush hour two friends, a German and an Englishman, wanted to take the Tube (subway) in London. As they approached the station, they encountered a long line of people waiting to buy tickets. As the Englishman turned toward the end of the line, the German said, "Waiting in line is going to take forever; let's just get to the front." The Englishman was horrified and explained that such a move was absolutely unthinkable and could not be done. The German, in turn, was amazed at how fast the orderly line moved; waiting in line did not take so long after all.

Generally, people from Northern Europe prefer a larger physical space and therefore stand farther apart in waiting lines. People from Latin countries, in contrast, have a smaller physical space and stand closer. Seeing space in lines at EuroDisney, Latin visitors frequently try to fill in the spaces left by people from Northern Europe. This, annoys the Northern Europeans.

In public spaces Germans also emphasize their rights. Individuals are expected to protect and insist on their rights. Children must be prepared for a rough and cruel world; therefore, they must practice insisting on their rights from an early age.

Accidents are today's most frequent cause of death in children and cripple a great many others. Accidents occur to children in all sorts of places — at home, on the street, at school, on public playgrounds, at places to swim, and on camping trips. There are now many more chances for accidents than there used to be. Automobiles, power tools, electric wiring, and easy ways of starting fire are some examples. Most accidents are caused by carelessness.

I never forget the terrible accident happened to a child. It was a rainy and windy morning. The sky was gloomy, the temperature was low, and the street was nearly deserted. I was on my way back to school. A little schoolboy came out of a house, and slammed the door. He walked hurriedly along. As he passed me, I heard him reciting the multiplication tables. He was still reciting when he started to cross the street.

He was too preoccupied in his study to look before he crossed. Suddenly, a speeding car came round the corner. I was terrified, and shouted at him to stop. But it was too late. The car ran straight towards him. Bang! He was knocked down. I ran towards the boy, crying for help. The boy was still bleeding when the police and ambulance arrived.

When I picked up the evening newspaper, my eyes were caught by one of the headlines — Schoolboy Killed in a Car Accident. I felt very sad for the child. A great deal of effort should be taken to let children know the importance of safety. Safety is everyone's business.