有的人仅穿着短裤，站在寒风中瑟瑟发抖；有的人刚洗完澡，裹着条毯子就冲到外面……火警一响，性命攸关，形象当然撂一边了。短短一个晚上，身在英国南安普敦大学的作者就经历了两次火警，英国人生活态度之认真和工作效率之高由此可见一斑。

Suddenly the big fire alarm in the corridor sounded piercingly, then the small alarm in my room followed. It was nearly 10 p.m. on 19 November 1999. I had arrived in England for only 22 days. The place I stayed was the accommodation hall for graduate students of Southampton University. In the building I lived there were four floors. On each floor were four corridors, with seven single rooms in each corridor. More than 90 students, mostly from Asia, lived in it at that time. Aroundthe building were some big trees and their leaves had nearly all fallen.

The piercing sound surprised me. "What's happened?" Going out of the room, I saw other students leaving their rooms and going down through the emergency exit. A girl from Beijing urged me to hurry out. But I hesitated whether to take something valuable with me. Picking up my overcoat and watch, I went along with her downs tairs . "It's a fire drill," she told me. "The English like to do such things and I have experienced this three times since I came here in August, twice in this building, once in the library."

Two men came on the spot in 5 minutes. Then a fire engine arrived. The firemen pointed here and there and went up to the first floor. "It doesn't seem like a fire drill." I said to myself. Waiting 10 meters away from the building and looking around, I couldn't help laughing. As all the people had left the building in a hurry, they were not able to dress properly: some wore leather shoes without socks,and some were in socks without shoes, some had plates in hands and kept on eating their dinners. One girl who wore shorts stood shivering, one boy wrapped himself in a blanket because he was taking a shower when the alarm was set off. Most of them wore so little in the chilly wind (about 8 degree Celsius) that they felt cold and started to jump up and down in order to keep themselves warm. I was pleased that I had put on my overcoat and could stand aside quietly watching what was going on and listening to others' complaints.

We were allowed to go back to our rooms 15 minutes later when the alarm was turned off. After shutting the door, my eyes fixed on a notice . That was the only paper on the wall when I moved in. It had two parts, the part in black ink was fourdos telling people what to do in case the house caught fire; the part in red ink
was four don'ts warning people what they should not do in the fire. It read as follows:

FIRE ACTION!

If you discover a fire
　　1. Sound the alarm.
　　2. Call fire brigade by dialing 999 (if internal-phone 9-999).
　　3. Attack the fire using the appliances provided only if safe to do so.
　　　On hearing the fire alarm...
　　4. Leave by the nearest exit and move clear of the building.
　　　Do not take risks.
　　　Do not stop to collect personal belongings.
　　　Do not re-enter the building.
　　　Do not use lift.

Four days later, on 23 November, the alarms sounded again at night. This time two fire engines came within a very short time. It turned out at last that the alarms were set by someone's cigarette-smoking.The night alarm was not that the English liked to have fire drills and to turn the foreign students out in the cold wind but that something unusual or unsafe had happened. I came to see why there was a small alarm in each room besides the big one in the corridor, and why there were two exits in each corridor ?nbsp;one inward for everyday use, the other outward foremergent use. Though more than two years has passed, the alarm nights can still appear vividly in front of my eyes as if they were happening yesterday. Anyway who can forget the ringing at the same time of over one hundred alarms and the panic it caused? The English people's attitude to lives and their effectiveness in work made a strong impression on me.