Music can make us feel happy or peaceful, energize us to dance, or move us to tears. As an orchestra (交响乐) conductor, Amy Andersson brings music to life, allowing people to experience the feelings that music can bring

She started to sing in the school Andersson, fell in love with music as a child. choirs in the first grade, began studying the piano at 7, and started composing at 9. Her school had no orchestra, but she bought many recordings of great orchestras and conductors and listened to them for hours every day.

During a concert, the audience see the back of a conductor and the arm movements she or he makes to lead the orchestra. What the audience do not see is all the work the conductor has done beforehand to prepare for the performance

Months before a concert, Andersson studies a piece of music by playing it on the piano. She decides how she wants each part to sound. Should it be fast or slow? Loud or soft? She reads about the composer's life and reviews historical events that have influenced the composer. Her goal is to recreate the music as the composer wanted.

While conducting, Andersson uses her whole body to express how the music should sound and feel. Her movements are dramatic (生动的) when the music is energetic, gentle and peaceful.

Each instrument makes a special sound. Although it is not necessary for conductors to know how to play all the instruments, they must be familiar with the sound of each instrument. To help young musicians understand how to play the music, Andersson will tell them to imagine a ship being hit by waves or a calm, leisurely (悠闲) walk.

Andersson has seen the audience at her concerts applauding (鼓掌) together in rhythm. She i happy to know that she and the musicians have brought joy into ordinary days.

It’s still fresh in my memory: the feeling of making my first wooden surfboard. There was the excitement of what I was making: the fact I was going to play in the ocean with it. Then at last walking into the water with my new board and riding the waves as they crashed to the shore. All on a piece of wood that I had shaped myself, by hand.

It was my final year at university and I promised myself then that this was going to remain a part of my life in some form forever.

Making that first board had brought together two of my great loves: for the sea, and for trees. I grew up in Buckingham shire, a long way from the ocean, but thankfully each summer we would make a family trip to the Cornish coast. It was on these holidays that I had my first taste of playing in the energy of the surf, experiencing the exciting feeling of being carried towards the beach by the rolling waves. From the first ride, I was hooked.

My other great passion was trees. The smell of the earth, the sound of the branches swinging in the wind and the crunching of leaves underfoot all bring about a sense of calm and wonder. It felt natural for me to explore the connection I felt with trees. So, in my early teens, I began crafting things from wood.

When the time came to leave university in 2009, I wasn’t alone. I was with my girlfriend, who is now my wife, and we had two options. It was either head back home for a life around London, or take a risk and try and make a life for ourselves in Cornwall.

We loaded our car and followed the setting sun. The ocean was calling.

José Salvador Alvarenga is a Salvadoran fisherman who spent 13 months at sea. He is the first person in recorded history to have survived in a small boat at sea for more than a year.

On November 17, 2012, Alvarenga set off on a professional fishing trip with a young fisherman named Ezequiel Cordoba, with whom he had never worked. Stepping aboard the ship from a fishing village on the Pacific coast of Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, they planned to be out about 30 hours hunting shark, tuna and mahimahi. A few hours into their voyage, a storm struck that lasted five days and blew them off course. Alvarenga called his boss on the ship’s radio for help, but it — and much of the rest of the boat’s electronics — had been disabled by the storm. The boat’s motor was also damaged.

A search party was sent, but after two days with no success, their boss gave up and assumed they had drowned. All on their tod and without food or supplies, the two fishermen survived by eating raw fish, turtles and jellyfish. They drank rainwater and turtle blood. As weeks turned to months, Cordoba became severely unwell from eating months of raw food and died.

Alvarenga then spent another nine months alone at sea, until he eventually spotted a small island. Abandoning his boat and swimming to shore, he almost immediately met a local couple who called police. He had reached the Marshall Islands. His journey lasted 438 days and his voyage is estimated to have covered between 5,500 to 6,700 miles.