Everybody should have some level of first aid ability, because accidents and medical emergencies can happen anywhere at any time. St John First Aid courses give you the knowledge and confidence to provide effective first aid whenever it's needed.

First Aid Level 1

    Ideal(理想的) for anyone who wants to learn basic first aid or needs to renew their first aid qualification. Courses can be held at St John or your workplace.

Fee: $162(includes GST)

Duration(持续时间): Eight hours

First Aid Level 2

    Includes all course content from First Aid Level One, plus an additional half day. Ideal for special first aiders, health and safety managers and anyone who needs a first aid qualification.

Fee: $235(includes GST)

Duration: 12 hours

Pre-Hospital Emergency Care (PHEC)

    Advanced training for first aiders who already hold unit standards 6400 and 6402. Ideal for people who require advanced first aid skills or a pre-hospital emergency care (PHEC) qualification for their work.

Fee: $635(includes GST)

Duration: Three days

Child First Aid

    Ideal for parents, grandparents and other family caregivers. A recognized qualification for childcare workers.

Fee: $65(includes GST)

Duration: Four hours

Outdoor First Aid

    First aid response for accidents and medical emergencies in the wilderness. For groups of eight or more.

Duration: One to two days depending on experience

Sports First Aid

    First aid response for common sporting injuries and medical emergencies. Includes ACC injury prevention advice.

Duration: Eight hours.

    I can't think of a better way of appreciating a new culture than by taking part in one of its festivals. You'll find that some festivals are celebrated by an entire country, while others may be known only to a single city or region, but either way festivals play an important role in a certain culture. Just enjoy them!

    ★ Tomatina — Bunol, Spain

    Every last Wednesday in August, the town of Bunol is filled with tons of tomatoes in the world's biggest food flight. Many people wear goggles during this hour of great fun, as the town becomes a red river.

    ★ Boryeong Mud Festival — Boryeong, South Korea

    For two weeks in July, millions gather in Boryeong to experience the grey pools and slides. What began as a way to help sell the region's mineral-rich mud has turned into a festive party with music and fireworks. The mud is usually only available in cosmetic products (化妆品), but here you can cake yourself in grey as you want.

    ★ Holi — India

    Holi, the Festival of Colors, is a Hindu celebration full of joy and one of India's most important holidays. During the day of the last full moon of the lunar month, usually late February or early March, the air is full of brightly colored powder (粉末). The festival is celebrated differently throughout the country, with bonfires and music, but the cheerful spirit is common among Hindu people around the world.

    ★ International Pillow Fight Day — Worldwide

    Tens of thousands of people took part in the 4th annual International Pillow Fight Day on April 2,2013. From London to Vancouver to many other cities, the festival is held in more than 100 countries. So just bring a soft pillow in early April, and watch feathers fly.

    When most people think of the word, “brand”, they think of the Nike Swoosh, Ford “blue oval,” McDonalds Golden Arches, or the “State Farm is There” jingle. They know what they will get with a well branded product or service as promised. Think of Volvo, for instance, and your first thoughts are probably something like “well built, comfortable, Swedish” and, most of all, “safety”.

    So a brand is a lot more than a logo, icon, or slogan. Catchy as it may sound, it isn't the “brand” in the true sense—and it certainly isn't what makes the brand valuable. A company's brand is a promise. It's a description of the company's character. To some extent, it's a mission; it's how the company creates and delivers value. Also, it's the feeling the company conveys to its stakeholders. Successful brands meet various challenges and consistently deliver on their promises, which is how they create brand value. To illustrate it, here are some brand promises from three highly successful, world-wide brands: The NFL: “To be the premier sports and entertainment brand that brings people together, connecting them socially and emotionally like no other.” Coca-Cola: “To inspire moments of optimism and uplift.” Virgin Atlantic: “To be genuine, fun, contemporary, and different in everything we do at a reasonable price.”

    Interesting. In none of the above cases does the brand promise describe what these companies do or provide. The NFL's brand promise says nothing about football. Coca-Cola doesn't talk about providing the best soft drinks in the world. And Virgin Atlantic's promise goes a lot farther than seating passengers in its aircrafts.

    Of course, a promise is nowhere near enough. The promise along with look, personality, time, money, and hard work combined can eventually help to build and maintain great brands and acquire a special patina(光泽) of what I call “me” appeal, showing my personal appetite. Apple has that patina. All of this can lead to sub-brands, like iPhone and iPad which acquire the glory of the parent brand.

    Sometimes a brand is memorable because of little things. TD Bank has a special place in their branches for you to deposit all those coins you collect in jars. It is called the Penny Arcade that turns depositing your coins into a fun game in which you can even win prizes. Years ago, Dime Savings Bank in New York had a small dime(十分硬币) carrier. It was given to kids and then they'd fill up its 50 slots (投币口) with a dime in each one and bring it to exchange for a $5 bill.

    We're often reminded of the importance of preserving the planet as we see it for future generations—and children at St Oswald's Primary School in Chester certainly agree.

    Nine-year-old Isobel Kelleher from the school's Hummingbirds class thinks adults need to take note. “Sometimes they can be busy and I don't think they think they can make a difference，but if everyone does a little bit it all adds up，” she tells HuffPost UK.“ We started looking at plastic pollution in our oceans and the things like plastic bags and broken down pieces of plastic that are polluting them.” she says.“ Fish can eat the plastic and they can die，or we might even eat the fish ourselves.”

    Mr Timms，Isobel's teacher，has been spearheading a new project at the school which lets children loose creatively to raise awareness of the need to be more environmentally friendly. The entire Hummingbirds class，which is made up of 9 and 10-year-old pupils，has been busy writing poems and creating online video adverts to warn adults about the serious situation of our oceans and wildlife.

    Mr Timms thinks children have an important role to play in teaching us how to take care of the things around us. We sometimes overlook how much we can really learn from children.” he says.“ It has been really hard to believe having parents come in saying that their children have been asking them to stop using plastic，and to recycle more，and even stopping them using plastic straws.”

    Mr Timms is proud of his Hummingbirds class.“ The message that they would like to send to the world is simple stopping this isn't someone else's job，and it won't be OK if we just leave it.”

    Just like rice and noodles are different from bread, snacks in China are a world apart from those in the UK and the US. For one thing, I never imagined that sunflower seeds (瓜子) would be so popular here. I spotted people having them while waiting for tables outside restaurants, before dinner and, of course, while watching TV. I also saw that a plate of sunflower seeds is always on offer during the Spring Festival holidays.

    I had seldom tried sunflower seeds when I came to China. In the UK, though, young people love their snacks. In fact, young people in Britain eat more snacks than people of the same age in other European countries. A recent survey has discovered that 64 percent of under 20-year-olds snack between meals, according to an article on the British Council website. In comparison (对比), 58.7 percent of young people snack in Germany, 53 percent in France, and only 40.7 percent in Spain.

    British snacks are generally unhealthy. Our favorites are probably potato chips, which we call crisps, and chocolate bars. From a very young age, we always looked forward to our crisps and chocolate bars after school, perhaps even included with sandwiches and fruit in our school lunches that our parents made for us.

    Snacks are also popular in the US. One of the things that I found the most extraordinary when I first visited the US was the number of snacks in their supermarkets; I was surprised to find huge aisles (过道) just for snacks that were bigger than some stores I'd been to in the UK. Snack tastes in the US are much the same as those in the UK, except there's much more choice – every kind of fatty, sugary food is available (可获得的) to everyone all the time.

    All in all, it's probably best for your health if you like sunflower seeds rather than potato chips and chocolate. But eating these delicious treats at times couldn't possibly be wrong, could it?

    Psychology has a new application in the field of medicine. Many doctors, together with their patients, are looking for alternative methods of treatment of physical problems. In large hospitals, modern therapy(疗法)seems to focus on the physical disease. Patients may feel they are treated like broken machines. Some doctors have recognized this as a problem. They are now using psychological therapy, in which the patient is working with the doctors against the disease with the help of medicine. The patient does not wait for the medicine and treatment to cure him or her, but instead the patient joins in the fight.

    The doctor knows that a disease affects a patient's body physically. The body of the patient changes because of the disease. He is not only physically affected, but also has an emotional response to the disease. Because his mind is affected, and his attitude and behavior change. The medical treatment might cure the patient's physical problems, but the patient's mind must fight the emotional ones. For example, the studies of one doctor, Carl Simonton, M.D., have shown that a typical cancer patient has predictable attitudes. She typically feels depressed, upset, and angry. Her constant depression makes her acts unfriendly toward her family, friends, doctors, and nurses. Such attitudes and behaviors prevent recovery. Therefore, a doctor's treatment must help the patient change that. Simonton's method emphasizes treatment of the "whole" patient.

    The attitude of a cancer patient receiving radiation therapy, an X-ray treatment, can become more positive. The physician who is following Simonton's psychological treatment plan suggests that the patient imagine that he or she can see the tumor(肿瘤)in the body. In the mental picture, the patient "sees" a powerful beam of radiation like a million bullets of energy. The patient imagines the beam hitting the tumor cells and causing them to shrink. For another cancer patient, Dr. Simonton asks him to imagine the medicine going from the stomach into the bloodstream and to the cancer cells. The patient imagines that the medicine is like an army fighting the diseased cells and sees the cancer cells gradually dying and his blood carrying away the dead cells. Both the medical therapy and the patient's positive attitude fight the disease.

    Doctors are not certain why this mental therapy works. However, this use of psychology does help some patients because their attitudes about themselves change. They become more confident because they use the power within their own minds to help stop the disease.

    Another application of using the mind to help cure disease is the use of suggestion therapy. At first, the doctor helps the patient to concentrate deeply. The patient thinks only about one thing. He becomes so unaware of other things around him that he is asleep, or rather in a trance(催眠状态). Then the physician makes "a suggestion" to the patient about the medical problem. The patient's mind responds to the suggestion even after the patient is no longer in the trance. In this way, the patient uses his mind to help his body respond to treatment.

    Doctors have learned that this use of psychology is helpful for both adults and children. For example, physicians have used suggestion to help adults deal with the strong pain of some disease. Furthermore, such treatment may help the patient with a chronic diseases. Suggestion has been used to change children's habits like nail­biting, thumb­sucking, and sleep­related problems.

    Many professional medical groups have accepted the medical use of psychology and that psychology has important applications in medicine.