On one of her trips to New York several years ago, Eudora Welty decided to take a couple of New York friends out to dinner. They settled in at a comfortable East Side cafe and within minutes, another customer was approaching their table.

      “Hey, aren't you from Mississippi?” the elegant, white-haired writer remembered being asked by the stranger. “I'm from Mississippi too.”

      Without a second thought, the woman joined the Welty party. When her dinner partner showed up, she also pulled up a chair

      “They began telling me all the news of Mississippi,” Welty said. “I didn't know what my New York friends were thinking.”

Taxis on a rainy New York night are rarer than sunshine. By the time the group got up to leave, it was pouring outside. Welty's new friends immediately sent a waiter to find a cab. Heading back downtown toward her hotel, her big-city friends were amazed at the turn of events that had changed their Big Apple dinner into a Mississippi.

      “My friends said: 'Now we believe your stories,'” Welty added. “And I said: 'Now you know. These are the people that make me write them.'”

      Sitting on a sofa in her room, Welty, a slim figure in a simple gray dress, looked pleased with this explanation.

      “I don't make them up,” she said of the characters in her fiction these last 50 or so years. “I don't have to.”

Beauticians, bartenders, piano players and people with purple hats, Welty's people come from afternoons spent visiting with old friends, from walks through the streets of her native Jackson, Miss., from conversations overheard on a bus. It annoys Welty that, at 78, her left ear has now given out. Sometimes, sitting on a bus or a train, she hears only a fragment(片段) of a particularly interesting story.

What's on?

Electric Underground

7.30pm－1.00am   Free at the Cyclops Theatre

    Do you know who's playing in your area? We're bringing you an evening of live rock and pop music from the best local bands. Are you interested in becoming a musician and getting a recording contract(合同)? If so, come early to the talk at 7.30pm by Jules Skye, a successful record producer. He's going to talk about how you can find the right person to produce you music.

Gee Whizz

8.30pm-10.30pm   Comedy at Kaleidoscope

    Come and see Gee Whizz perform. He's the funniest stand-up comedian on the comedy scene. This joyful show will please everyone, from the youngest to the oldest. Gee Whizz really knows how to make you laugh! Our bar is open from 7.00pm for drinks and snacks(快餐).

Simon's Workshop

5.00pm-7.30pm    Wednesdays at Victoria Stage

    This is a good chance for anyone who wants to learn how to do comedy. The workshop looks at every kind of comedy, and practices many different ways of making people laugh. Simon is a comedian and actor who has 10 years' experience of teaching comedy. His workshops are exciting and fun. An evening with Simon will give you the confidence to be funny.

Charlotte Stone

8.00pm-11.00pm     Pizza World

    Fine food with beautiful jazz music; this is a great evening out. Charlotte Stone will perform songs from her new best-selling CD, with James Pickering on the piano. The menu is Italian, with excellent meat and fresh fish, pizzas and pasta (面食). Book early to get a table. Our bar is open all day, and serves cocktails, coffee, beer, and white wine.

    Nations in the UN have agreed that the world needs to completely stop plastic waste from entering the oceans. The UN resolution(决议) has no timetable. But ministers at an environment summit believe it will set the course for much tougher policies and send a clear signal to business.

    Under the resolution, governments would establish an international task force(特遣小组) to advise on fighting what the UN's oceans chief has described as a world crisis. One controversial issue is the wish to include businesses on the global task force. Ministers say the problem will not be solved without business, but green groups point out that some firms in the plastics industry have been against restrictions for decades. Vidar Helgesen, a leading voice in the talks, told BBC News, “Business is listening to markets and seeing how marine litter(海洋垃圾) is a growing popular concern. It's possibly the fastest－growing environmental problem and it's therefore a fast－growing problem for business. We need to bring on board those companies that want to change things, and then look at taxes and regulations to make more companies act.”

    Certainly, there has been resistance from plastics firms to the bans. One UN delegate, who did not want to be named, stated that journalists in some countries were being paid by the plastics industry to write stories about job losses following the plastic bag ban. But they did not mention the jobs being created in alternatives, such as labour－intensive basketwork, which provides work for the rural poor. But some governments are standing firm, and the meeting has witnessed individual nations declaring tougher action against single－use plastic bags.

    The UN's spokesman Sam Barratt told BBC News, “Of course we would have liked to have gone further, but this meeting's made real progress. There's now a sense of urgency and energy behind the issue that we haven't quite seen before. What is obvious, though, is that the UN can't solve this problem on its own. We need to do it in partnership with governments, businesses and even individuals.”

    Road trip

    Motorhome delivery offers great family holidays. For just $1 a day, you can hire a fully﹣equipped motorhome, which you deliver to a specific destination within some days and kilometers. You then hire another one to get home or take a bus or train. Your only other expense will be fuel and about﹩20 a day for parking fees. To learn more, visit apollocamper.com.

    Plan ahead

    For a comfortable break, flexibility with times, dates and places helps lower the cost. Find a few hotels you like, ask about their vacant rooms, then wait a few weeks and call again. If they still have rooms, you're at an advantage to ask for a better price. Lots of last﹣minute deals are online. Watif （watif.com.au） has deals on hotels that have dropped their prices so slow. You don't know where you're staying until it's booked, but anywhere with four or five stars has to be fairly good.

    Back to nature

    Wild camping appeals to nature lovers and costs nothing. This is forbidden on beaches and parks in most urban areas, but you can turn up in more distant area as long as nobody owns the land. You'll need to take everything with you and may need to shop on eBuy （ebuy.com.au）.If you're a camping beginner, be aware of safety measures and get your questions answered on the Internet.

    Swap meet

    How about a home swap？For a $250 yearly joining cost, you can stay in someone's home in an international place of your choice while they or someone else stays in yours. Find out more at familylink.com.au.

    Kang Sung-il buys Sancho, his Pomeranian, a toy every business trip and this lunar New Year holiday will dress him up in s new $50 suit to visit 'grandma', Kang's mother. Kang and his wife say children are too expensive and bring too much pressure. Instead they have chosen to shower Sancho with love and gifts.

    They are not alone. South Korea's pet industry is booming, fuelled by the same factors that have made the country's birth rate, at 1.05 births per woman, the lowest in the world: the high cost of education and housing as well as extremely long working days.

    "Social pressures in South Korea are such that parents are required to provider resources for decades from private schooling to art classes," said Kang a 39 year old manager of a pet funeral home.

    On top of education expenses, an average and household must budget roughly 12.8 years of income to buy a mid-range home, compared to 8.8 years in 2014, data from KB Kookmin Bank shows. Adding to their stress, south Koreans work the third most hours per year among OECD (经合组织) nations, next only to Mexico and costa Rica.

    Pet-owning households have rose to 28 percent of all South Korean households in 2018, compared with 18 percent in 2012, government data shows.

    That in turn has resulted in a prosperous pet care industry whose offerings include tailored pet diets and high-priced photo shoots. Pet-related startup s are also popular with venture capitalists. The south Korean pet-related industry was worth 2.7 trillion won ($2.4 billion) last year, and that could more than double in size by 2027, according to the Korean Rural Economic Institute.

    Mother Teresa (August 26, 1910-September 5, 1997) was a great woman, who did a lot to improve the social condition of mankind. Due to her contribution in serving the society, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize aged 69.

    She was brought up in a Catholic family. When she was only seven, she lost her father. Even as a young child, she was interested in the life of missionaries (传教士). At the age of 18, she decided that she would become a nun. She left her home and went to join the Sisters of Loreto. It was the first step that she made towards providing services for mankind.

    On the 7th of October in the year 1950, Mother Teresa received Vatican permission to start the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, the mission of which would be to take care of the needy, the homeless, and people who were shunned by the society. Then it had a number of branches all over the country. The journey of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity started with the setting up of homes for "the Dying".

    In the year 1983, Mother Teresa suffered from a serious heart attack, while she was in Rome. However, she recovered. But, later in 1989, she again got an attack. Her health went worse and in the year 1991, she suffered from pneumonia. Taking her health problems into consideration, Mother Teresa decided to resign (辞职) from the post of head of the order.

    A secret vote was conducted in which all the nuns voted for the stay of Mother Teresa except herself. So, she agreed to continue serving as head of the Missionaries of Charity. Day by day her health was getting worse. On September 5, 1997, exactly nine days after her 87th birthday, this great soul departed for heaven.