双语财经新闻 第53期:如果时间就是金钱(2)

Retail Therapy

购物疗法

It all seems harmless enough: making a quick stop for coffee on your way to the office; grabbing a bite at the salad place and perhaps running an errand7 at the pharmacy during your lunch hour; doing a little grocery shopping or making other necessary stops after work. Add all that up and mix it in with more discretionary retail outings, and that’s nearly six and half hours per week that the average woman spends buying stuff. (Unsurprisingly, men roll in at a lazy four hours weekly in the shopping category.) And that doesn’t even take Into account8 the immeasurable hours we spend browsing and fondling and mulling over and justifying various buys; this is simply the time we spend making purchases at cash registers. I’ll not touch on the financial implications of this particular statistic — let’ s just say it’s a miracle economic recovery is still described as sluggish.

这看上去没什么坏处:比如，在你去办公室的路上稍作停留,买杯咖啡;趁着中 午用餐的时间品尝一下沙拉,或者跑到药店买药什么的;下班之后到杂货店买点东 西，或者停下来做些其他事情。将上述所说的加起来，再将他们和更多的随意的购 物参观放松加在一起，大概一周花上6.5个小时，这大概就是女性平均买东西的时 间(不必吃惊，就连懒惰的男性消耗在购物上的时间一周也有4个小时)。而且，这当 中还不包括我们在购物时浏览的时间、在喜爱的物品上停留的时间，以及用来证明 买这些东西是有价值的时间,还有很简单的在收银柜台前的时间花费,我无法说明 这些详细的统计量在金融业有怎样的含义——我只能说，经济复苏还在缓慢进行 中，这真是个奇迹。

The Idiot Box

电视机

Nothing drains our time reserves like the television. We’ve all been guilty of turning on the TV to catch the last quarter of the game or check to see who’s still on the island and who isn’t — and next thing you know, it’s 2 a.m. That seems like an extreme scenario — or maybe not, if you consider that the average American spends three hours a day watching TV. Twenty-four hours in a day have officially become twenty-one — I thought we needed more time, not less.

没有什么能比电视机更能榨干我们存储的时间的了。我们带着罪恶感打开电 视机去看最新一季的比赛，或者去查看一下岛上谁还活着谁巳经死亡——下一件 事你知道的，天啊,已经凌晨2点了 ！这是个相对极端的场景，或者说，还不止如此， 如果你考虑到美国人平均一天看3小时电视的话。如此一来，一天的24小时已变成 21小时~我觉得我们需要更多的时间，而不是更少。

Something to Cry About

为某些事哭泣

You may not have shed many tears in the last few days, but on average, women over the age of nineteen cry for two hours a week. What sets us off? Just about anything, apparently — without even taking into account the usual hormonal fluctuations that often cause us to weep if we look at a puppy from the right top causes of tearful female outbursts are weepy movies, relationship worries, breaking up, and the death of a loved one — and, of course, pain and simple exhaustion can weaken our tear ducts，strongholds.

在生命的最后几天,你或许不会流太多的眼泪,但超过19岁的女性平均一周得 哭上2小时。是什么惹我们情绪爆发了?任何事情都有可能,很明显的如果我们 直面一个幼小的动物，我们甚至无需考虑是惯常的荷尔蒙激素波动造成的我们哭 泣。能让一位女性眼泪决堤的“主犯”是催人落泪的电影,折磨人的关系,破裂的感 情,以及一位挚爱之人的去世——当然,疼痛和纯粹的筋疲力尽的感觉也能让女性 的泪腺变得脆弱。

Between the TV, Facebook, deciding what to wear, shopping, daydreaming, and weeping, it’s a wonder we get anything done at all. My rudimentary math skills suggest that the average American woman spends roughly 3,311 hours each year indulging in all of these activities at least to some extent. There are 8,766 hours in a year. That means that almost half our time is “wasted,” sucked into the vortex of our modern world and all of its tempting distractions. Or you could just call it “living.”

穿梭在电视、脸谱网、决定穿什么、购物、白日梦和哭泣的循环之中，如果我们还能有时间做成任何事情，那还真是一个奇 迹。我蹩脚的数学才能所得出的数据是:美 国女性一年平均从某种程度上最少花 上3311小时沉浸在上述这些活动中。1年总 共有8766个小时，这就意味着一年有一半的 时间是被浪费掉的’被无情地卷入现代社会 和充满诱惑力娱乐的漩涡中。或者，你姑且 能将其称之为“生存”。