我是幸运的,因为我不用奔波于上下班的路上,奥巴马来洛杉矶也没给我造成太大影响,但是,在家工作却时不时地要被调皮的小鬼们骚扰一番,他们对你办公室的一切都充满了好奇,会在你采访重要人物的时候忽然窜进来做个鬼脸,或者在你的办公室前将篮球拍得直响,天热了打开窗户那篮球直奔你的电脑就来了……
By Matthew Garrahan
Fortunately, I’ve been able to avoid most instances of traffic jam brought by presidential visits because I don’t have to commute anywhere.
Barack Obama visited Los Angeles recently and, amid the sound of military helicopters flying low over the city before his arrival, you could almost hear the collective groan of disgruntled commuters. The president is beloved in La La Land but even laid-back, liberal Angelenos have started to take umbrage at his visits, which regularly paralyse large sections of a city still beholden to travelling by car. Fortunately, I’ve been able to avoid most instances of Obamajam, as it is known here, because I don’t have to commute anywhere.
I am among the 10 percent of people in the U.S. that regularly works from home. You could include Obama among them, although I suspect his working area in the White House is better-equipped than my small space tacked on to the back of the garage. He also probably doesn’t have a problem with three little kids—our four-year-old boy and girl twins and six-year-old boy—interrupting his phone calls or bursting into his office at inopportune moments.
Before we had children, I didn’t count on quite how noisy they would be—or how fascinated they would be with the mundane stuff going on in my office. And yet every day there they are, knocking on my window and peering inside, as if looking at an animal in a zoo.
If I have forgotten to lock the door, I may turn around in my chair to find them trying to dismantle my printer or stick their fingers in electrical sockets. Once, a telephone interview I was doing with the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was interrupted by my older son, then three years old, and completely naked apart from a pirate eyepatch, bandanna and plastic cutlass. “Ahaaar!” he shouted, waving the cutlass in my face.
“What was dat?” said Schwarzenegger.
I stammered something about the joys of children and silently managed to shoo the boy out of the room without putting down the phone or my notepad. The governor, had he seen this manoeuvring, would have been proud.
Noise at home is also a factor. We stupidly bought my six-year-old a basketball hoop but the only flat part of the garden where it can stand is directly outside the office. The metronomic sound of a ball bouncing on concrete has become a maddening backing track and opening my door on hot days will invariably be followed by said ball hurtling into the room and smashing into my computer.
I shouldn’t gripe. I no longer have to endure having someone’s armpit being pressed into my face on a crowded train and home status means I should be a more productive worker, if a recent Stanford University study of a Chinese company is to be believed—although the authors acknowledged that working from home could also lead to “shirking from home”. I would argue that a bigger problem is losing one’s marbles : staring at the same walls every day and not going anywhere can do strange things to a person.
I realized early on that I had to get out of the house at least once a day to avoid turning into an unshaven and unshowered recluse who was still in his pyjamas at dinner time. I would work for an hour or so in a local coffee shop but, like any routine, this became monotonous because I would constantly see the same faces: aspiring screenwriters poring over screenplays, elderly Botoxed women heading to the yoga studio next door and hordes of overweight Mamils (middle-aged male in Lycra) cycling by.
The coffee shop used to elect one of its patrons “customer of the week”, with the winner getting their picture displayed on the counter. One week I won and rushed home to tell my wife. She arched an eyebrow and said: “I think this working from home thing is getting to you.” She was right, of course. And yet here I am several years later, still working from home, sanity (vaguely) intact and, I’m happy to report, not sitting at my desk in my pyjamas. Not since last Tuesday, anyway.
实用口语情景轻松学:Take baby steps 慢慢来
2011年实用口语练习:这只是“权宜之计”
实用口语情景轻松学:我怀疑我是否能及格
2011年实用口语练习:从头至尾
实用口语:浪漫 Romance
职场英语情景会话:Farewell before Christmas 圣诞前的道别
口语情景对话:走遍美国精选 二度蜜月ACT 3 - 3
男生女生:我们可以只当朋友吗?
实用口语:就餐 Dining
大运会必备接待口语
英语口语主题:交际英语热门话题47个(6--闲聊)
英语口语主题:交际英语热门话题47个(25--竞选和辩论)
实用口语:Bob Brings Cookies to the market
实用口语:Singing With Friends
英语口语-安慰
疯狂口语要素精选 6
口语情景对话:走遍美国精选 感恩节ACT 1 - 1
实用口语:你以为你是谁啊?
2011年实用口语练习:当猪飞起来的时候
英语口语主题:交际英语热门话题47个(2--介绍)
2011年实用口语练习:表达鼓励的10句英语
如何用英语表达“你得减肥了”
如何用英文表达“你活该”
英文如何表达“拍马屁”或“巴结”
实用口语情景轻松学:我想买个数码摄像机
英语口语主题:交际英语热门话题47个(14--同事之间)
2011年实用口语练习:实用英语串烧
英语口语主题:交际英语热门话题47个(3--邀请)
2011年实用口语练习:“淘金热”
实用口语情景轻松学:有假钞的时候要送到银行去
不限 |
英语教案 |
英语课件 |
英语试题 |
不限 |
不限 |
上册 |
下册 |
不限 |