When her five daughters were young, Helene An always told them that there was strength in unity (团结). To show this, she held up one chopstick, representing oneperson. Then she easily broke it into two pieces. Next, she tied several chopsticks together, representing a family. She showed the girls it was hard to break the tied chopsticks. This lesson about family unity stayed with the daughters as they grew up.

    Helene An and her family own a large restaurant business in California. However, when Helene and her husband Danny left their home in Vietnam in 1975, they didn't have much money. They moved their family to San Francisco. There they joined Danny's mother, Diana, who owned a small Italian sandwich shop. Soon afterwards, Helene and Diana changed the sandwich shop into a small Vietnamese restaurant. The five daughters helped in the restaurant when they were young. However, Helene did not want her daughters to always work in the family business because she thought it was too hard.

    Eventually the girls all graduated from college and went away to work for themselves, but one by one, the daughters returned to work in the family business. They opened new restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Even though family members sometimes disagreed with each other, they worked together to make the business successful. Daughter Elisabeth explains, "Our mother taught us that to succeed we must have unity, and to have unity we must have peace. Without the strength of the family, there is no business."

    Their expanding business became a large corporation in 1996, with three generations of Ans working together. Now the Ans' corporation makes more than $20 million each year. Although they began with a small restaurant, they had big dreams, and they worked together. Now they are a big success.

    When we see well, we do not think about our eyes very often. It is only when we cannot see perfectly that we realize how important our eyes are.

    People who are near-sighted can only see things that are very close to their eyes. Everything else seems ­­blurry. Many people who do a lot of work, such as writing, reading and sewing become near-sighted. People who are far-sighted suffer from just the opposite problem. They can see things that are far away, but they have difficulty in reading a book unless they hold it at arm's length. If they want to do much reading, they must get glasses, too.

    Other people do not see clearly because their eyes are not exactly the right shape. They have what is called astigmatism (散光). This, too, can be corrected by glasses. Some people's eyes become cloudy because of cataracts (白内障). Long ago these people often became blind. Now, however, it is possible to operate on the cataracts and remove them.

    Having two good eyes is important for judging distances. Each eye sees things from a slightly different angle. To prove this to yourself, look at an object out of one eye; then look at the same object out of your other eye. You will find the object's relation to the background and other things around it has changed. The difference between these two different eye views helps us to judge how far away an object is. People who have only one eye cannot judge distances as people with two eyes.

    In colleges around the country, most students are also workers. The reality of college can be pretty different from the images presented in movies and television. Instead of the students who wake up late, party all the time, and study only before exams, many colleges are full of students with pressing schedules of not just classes and activities, but real jobs, too.

    This isn't a temporary phenomenon. The share of working students has been on the rise since the 1970s, and one-fifth of students work year round. About one-quarter of those who work while attending school have both a full-course load and a full-time job. The arrangement can help pay for tuition (学费) and living costs, obviously. And there's value in it beyond the direct cause: such jobs can also be critical for developing important professional and social skills that make it easier to land a job after graduation. With many employers looking for students with already-developed skill sets, on-the-job training while in college can be the best way to ensure a job later on.

    But it's not all upside. Even full-time work may not completely cover the cost of tuition and living expenses. The study notes that if a student worked a full-time job at the federal minimum wage, they would earn just over $15,000 each year, certainly not enough to pay for tuition, room, and board at many colleges without some serious financial aid. That means that though they're sacrificing time away from the classroom, many working students will still graduate with at least some debt. And working full time can reduce the chance that students will graduate at all, by cutting into the time available for studying and attending classes.

    There is little reward for attending but not finishing college. Students who end up leaving school because of difficulty in managing work and class are likely to find themselves stuck in some of the same jobs they might have gotten if they hadn't gone at all. The difficulty of working too much while in school can create a cycle that pushes students further into debt without receiving any of the financial or career benefits.

    I study English literature at university and have always been proud of Britain's literary heritage（文学遗产）. Some British authors that you may have heard of are Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. These writers are famous all over the world because their books have been translated into many different languages. In the UK, their novels are celebrated as some of the best that have ever been written. We say that these novels are “classic” because they are still read and enjoyed years after their publication.

    I read classic novels because they are part of my university lessons but also because I enjoy them. They can teach you a lot about how people used to live and what society was like in the past. Novels like Hard Times by Charles Dickens remind us of the poverty in London during the Industrial Revolution while Jane Austen's fiction shows us what family life was like in the 18th century.

    Classic novels usually have memorable stories land interesting characters. One of my favourite books is Charles Dickens Great Expectations. It is about a boy called Pip who suddenly receives a lot of money from a mysterious supporter. As he grows up, his character changes: he becomes quite selfish and mean. Another important character is Miss Havisham. When she was young, her fiancé ran away on their wedding day. She lives in a dark house and still wears her wedding dress. She is a fascinating character, both sad and scary.

    Reading classic novels enriches my knowledge and life experience. And it has become part of life.

    I began cycling in 2004 when I was a poor student. It was dangerous, sure, but cycling is the fastest, cheapest point-to-point form of transport in Melbourne. I own a car now, but that's just for transporting the baby or groceries.

    I hate driving. So it's been quite encouraging watching the growth in cyclist numbers over the past decade. It is estimated 10,000-plus cyclists enter the CBD (Central Business District) each day, taking pressure off public transport. But as more people take to cycling as a mode of transport, the number of cyclists seriously injured or killed keeps climbing. And that is a sign that our infrastructure (基础设施) is still not good enough.

    Melbourne was once a dream for cyclists-flat, long, wide roads, with plenty of paths along rivers. Now, cycling can be deadly, with roads dominated by cars. I have a friend who broke her back and was lucky to escape paralysis, and others with broken bones. In my time riding, I've been forced off the road by a truck, cut off by four-wheel drives, and told to get off the road.

    These things don't exactly happen to trams and buses, those other slowcoaches on Melbourne's roads. No—drivers reserve a particular savagery (残暴行为) for cyclists. And that's a sign of exactly one thing: inadequate infrastructure.

    We shouldn't need to be taught how to coexist in the same narrow space. Drivers and cyclists should be kept apart. The present debate over how to minimize “dooring” is a distraction.

    Dooring is not a legal problem. You cannot legislate (制定法律) it away. Designing bike paths so riders are channelled between moving cars and parked cars is deadly. All it takes is one daydreaming driver to fling open the door and you are gone. That's what happened to the young university student James Cross.

    This year, there are to be new anti-dooring lanes (车道) built on Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, where Cross died in 2010. But these lanes are not safe. Cyclists must still pass between two rows of cars.

    It has been described as art by some people, but to others it's an ugly part of modern life. What is it? Graffiti (涂鸦), of course. Look around cities in the UK today and you can see graffiti on buildings, walls, doors and even on buses or trains that have stayed in one place for too long. But where modern technology creates a problem, it also finds a way to deal with it. Last week, The Weekend West was shown around the factory of a small but successful company, Hubdean.

    Hubdean's achievement is a series of special paints which are graffiti-resistant. How do they work? It couldn't be simpler. Take any graffiti-covered surface. First, a treatment called Agproclear is used. Then, using a very hot pressure jet (压力喷嘴), this treatment is taken away and the graffiti disappears at the same time. Now you have a clean wall. But before this clean wall can be painted on by graffiti lovers, a new product, Agproshield, is used. This paint has a special surface which gives it two important advantages. Firstly, spray paint (喷雾颜料) won't stick to the surface very well, and secondly, the whole surface can be cleaned very easily, just using water. Once the surface is painted, no specialist equipment is needed to keep the area clean and graffiti-free.

    Not surprisingly, Hubdean's products are used by both local governments and private companies all over the UK, and now orders are being received from around the world. This brings the company a problem, however. Can they increase production to satisfy the needs? Of course, they can build a second factory or work with a large international company to make their products. The future is looking good for Hubdean!