Word: habited
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Experts blame the emergence of these souped-up bugs in part on our habit of treating so many infections with powerful antibiotics; the microbes battle back by mutating to become resistant to the drugs. It's a process that can't be reversed overnight, but there are ways to keep the bugs at bay. Schools and other fertile breeding grounds like health clubs should be kept clean. Adults and kids should stay alert to news of outbreaks. And everyone should take care to keep hands washed and cuts covered. Bacteria can't thrive where they aren't welcome...
...vaulting Macau past Las Vegas as the city with the most total annual wagering revenue). But for a small proportion of Macanese like those at Tan's meeting, the gambling boom has been a curse that has fed their addiction. For habitual gamblers and those prone to developing the habit, "Macau is really dangerous nowadays," says Ava Chan, former counselor at the Yat On Pathological Gambler's Counselling Centre in Macau. "Next to your house, there are slot machines. Across the street, there are casinos. Society doesn't realize the problem. They just think: Economic growth, no problem...
...those who succumbed was Hong Kong resident Chor-pat Wong, whose betting habit took him to Hong Kong's horse-racing tracks three times a week. By the time his wife left him in 2004, Wong had drained the couple's $25,000 savings and racked up $90,000 in credit-card debt. Homeless, the 55-year-old bus driver made plans to jump from his sister's ninth-floor apartment. She talked him out of it, and, after she stepped in to help him start over financially by declaring bankruptcy, he hasn't made a single wager...
...Wong was able to control his habit with the help of family. But one reason the region may be ill-prepared for a wave of new addicts is Asians' reticence and shame when it comes to getting mental-health treatment. "In the Chinese community, we don't have a help-seeking culture," says Ong. "Professional counseling and psychotherapy still bear a negative image." And even those who recognize they need help may have difficulty finding it; there are few gambling-treatment programs like Gamblers Anonymous in the region and little public funding is available to form new ones. In Macau...
...Graham Greene and Anthony Powell, the Trinidadian novelist Sam Selvon, or the Bengali pundit and essayist Nirad Chaudhuri, all of whom were his contemporaries. Greene's The Quiet American is dismissed because it presumed a knowledge of Indo-Chinese politics and Naipaul imperiously claims to not be in the habit of reading the newspapers. Anthony Powell was a good friend - in fact, during the 1950s he helped the young and ambitious Naipaul secure work as a book reviewer for the British magazine the New Statesman, and displayed an avuncular warmth that Naipaul warmly recalls. But Naipaul now conducts a shameful...