John is a very strong man. He gets a job cutting trees. His boss gives him an axe. The first day, John cuts down eighteen trees. “Good!” the boss says. Happily, John tries harder the next day, but he only cuts down fifteen trees. The third day he even tried harder, but can only cut down ten trees. Day after day, he cuts down fewer trees.

    “ I must be losing my strength ( 力气 ),” John thinks. He goes to the boss to say sorry and says that he does not know what is going on.” “When is the last time you sharpen ( 使锋利 ) your axe?” the boss asks. “I'm busy cutting trees, so I have no time to do it.”

    When John is working hard, he doesn't work “smart”. He doesn't think about the best way to do this job.

    When our son Bradley was ten, the new bicycle he had received earlier that year was stolen. Owning a bicycle was a big deal to our children when they were little. They spent hours and hours, day after day, on their bicycles, riding up and down the footpath, and at the front of the house. We also rode together as a family a lot. Bicycling was a great way to get the kids out of the house and into the fresh air without spending any money.

    Bradley had discovered that his bicycle had been stolen from our backyard in Campbelltown, South Australia, when he and his sister went outside for a morning ride. He couldn't believe that someone would do this.

    He got a large piece of cardboard, painted a sign begging for the bicycle to be returned, and tied the sign to the letterbox. The following morning, when I went out to collect the mail, I found a white envelope with the magical words, "Buy yourself a new bicycle". There was a $100 banknote inside.

    We were very touched that someone had the heart to do this, We've never been able to thank the person but we suspect(猜想) that it may have been one of our wonderful neighbors. Bradley painted a big"______!"on the sign and we left it outside for a couple of weeks afterwards, hoping the kind stranger would drive down our street.

    A delighted Bradley was able to buy a new bicycle. As the years went on, the bicycles became bigger and more expensive but remained just as important for those family bicycle rides. Now Bradley is 25. Sometimes I miss the days when receiving a bicycle was the best thing in the world to them.

    All these years later we are still thankful for the stranger's kindness. We were a young family with three little children and it meant a lot to us. We still talk about it and, even now, wonder who the kind stranger was.

    Life may be boring in Melbourne for people who enjoy exciting nightlife. Shops here often close at 6 p.m. and there are no places to go at night. But things were different this summer, as the Victoria Night Market recently opened!

    I went to the market at 7 p.m.. The smoky smell of kebabs(烤肉串) created a nice summer atmosphere(氛围). DJs on the stage played songs and the streets were packed with people. At that time, I thought I returned to China.

    I went to a stall(摊位) with bright red and orange decorations. A sign with the words "typical(典型的) Spanish" hung at the front of the stall. The dishes in front of me were confusing(困惑的), because I had never tried Spanish food before. A woman at the stall smiled, pointed at some food and said: "You can try this seafood rice. It's a very typical Spanish dish. Unlike Chinese fried rice, the rice was as orange as the stall's decorations. I tried it. I found that it was quite delicious as soon as I put it into my mouth.

    I spent 50 Australian dollars in total, but I got to taste Greek meatballs, Thai noodles and a Brazilian burger. I'm glad that the Victoria Market offers so many great foods from every corner of the world!

    Life is full of surprises and you never know how things will turn out.

    Sir John Gurdon is a good example of this. As a boy, he was told he was hopeless at science and was at bottom of his class. Now, aged 79, the very same Gurdon shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Japanese stem cell (干细胞) researcher Shinya Yamanaka.

    Like so many scientists, Gurdon shows us where the power of curiosity and perseverance(坚持) can lead.

    When he was 15 in 1948, Gurdon ranked last out of the 250 boys at his high school in biology and every other science subject. Gurdon's high school science teacher even said that his dream of becoming a scientist was "quite ridiculous".

    In spite of his teacher's criticisms(批评), Gurdon followed his curiosity and kept working hard. He went to the lab early and left later than anyone else. He experienced thousands of failures.

    "My own belief is that we will, in the end, understand everything about how cells actually work," Gurdon said.

    In 1962, Gurdon took a cell from an adult frog and moved its genetic (基因的) information into an egg cell. The egg cell then grew into a clone of the adult frog. This technique later helped to create the sheep Dolly in 1996，the first cloned mammal(哺乳动物) in the world.

    In 2006, Gurdon's work was developed by Yamanaka to show that a sample(样本) of a person's skin can be used to create stem cells. Using this technique, doctors can repair a patient's heart after a heart attack.

    "Luck favors the prepared mind," Gurdon told the Nobel Prize Organization. "Ninety percent of the time things don't work, but when they do, you have to seize(抓住) the chance."