My husband and I had been married nearly twenty-two years when I acquired Stevens-Johnson syndrome,a disorder where my immune system responded to a virus by producing painful blisters（水疱）.Although my long-term evaluation was good,I,who had been so fiercely independent,rapidly became absolutely helpless.

    My husband,Scott,stepped up to the plate,taking care of kids and cooking dinners.He also became my personal caretaker,applying the medicine to all of my blisters because my hands couldn't do the job.Needless to say,I had negative emotions,bouncing from embarrassment to shame caused by total reliance on someone other than myself.

    At one point when I had mentally and physically hit bottoms I remember thinking that Scott must somehow love me more than I could ever love him.With my illness he had become the stronger one,and I the weaker one.And this disturbed me.

    I recovered from my illness,but I couldn't seem to recover from the thought that I loved my husband less than he loved me.This seeming distinction in our love continued to annoy me for the year following my illness.

    Then recently Scott and I went on a long bike ride.He's an experienced cyclist;I'm quite the green hand.At one point with a strong headwind and sharp pain building in my tired legs,I really thought I couldn't go any further. Seeing me struggle,Scott pulled in front of me and yelled over his shoulder,"Stay close behind me."As I fell into the draft of his six-foot-three-inch frame and followed his steps,I discovered that my legs quit burning and I was able to catch my breath.My husband was pulling me along again.At this very moment I woke up to what I now believe: during these and other tough times,love has the opportunity to become stronger when one partner learns to lean on the other.

    I pray my husband will always be strong and healthy.But if he should ever become the struggling one,whether on a bike ride or with an illness,I trust I'll be ready to call out to him: Stay close behind me—my turn to pull you along.

    A group of graduates, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. They talked about the present-day hot topic—Happiness, but conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

    Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and different kinds of cups-porcelain（陶瓷的）, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some extremely beautiful—telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

    When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said, “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.”

    “Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup. But you consciously went for the best cups…And then you began coveting each other's cups.”

    “Now consider this: life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us. God brews（酿造）the coffee, not the cups…Enjoy your coffee! The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.”

    Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly.

    Leave the rest to God.

    There aren't many actors around the world who have enough self confidence to turn down an offer from Steven Spielberg. Maybe that was why Juliette Binoche gave him a choice. She said she'd be happy to be in Jurassic Park as long as she could play a dinosaur. Of course he turned her down and it was probably a good thing. It's difficult to imagine Juliette ripping people apart with her teeth. However, her decision doesn't seem to have done her career any harm. She has gone on to make a string of hits, including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient (for which she won an Oscar) and Chocolat.

    Success in the United States has not been so easy for other foreign stars. Gerald Depardieu is a good example. Since his first film in 1967, his filmography (影片集锦) lists 172 acting credits. But he has struggled on the other side of the pond. While some of his films have been popular in the US, they have usually been French films that travelled. One possible exception was Green Card, directed by Peter Weir, where he plays a French immigrant who goes through a fake wedding in order to stay and work in the United States. This is a predictable but sweet romantic comedy which typecasts (分配同一类型角色) its lead actors in terms of national stereotypes. While some reviewers were kind, others shredded both the film and Depardieu's performance.

    While Monsieur Depardieu hasn't received the recognition he would have liked in the United States, one Mexican actor has achieved almost instant success. Gael Garcia Bernal first gained recognition in Amores Perros in 2000 and a year later in Y tu mama tambien. Since then he has appeared with hometown hero, Brad Pitt in Babel and, under the direction of top producer and director, Jim Jarmusch, he starred in Limits of Control. He hasn't picked up an Oscar yet, but he was nominated for a BAFTA (英国电影电视艺术学院奖) in 2005 for his performance as the South American hero revolutionary Che Guevara, in Motorcycle Diaries. In the same year he played American music icon Elvis Presley in The King.

    Known for its historic stone paths and traffic-jammed streets, France forgoes（放弃）traditional bricks and pavement for shiny solar panels（嵌板）with its new roadway project. French officials announced plans to construct a 1,000-kilometer-long solar roadway, with each kilometer capable of providing enough cheap, renewable energy to power 5,000 homes.

    “The maximum effect of the program, if successful, could be to furnish 5 million people with electricity, or about 8 percent of the French population,” Segolence Royal, France's minister of ecology and energy, said at a conference, reports Global Construction Review.

The street — or “Wattway”—was made possible through the cooperation between the National Institute of Solar Energy and French civil engineering firm Colas. Tests for the road will begin in the spring. The entire project will take an estimated five years to complete, but builders won't have to destroy existing roads in the meantime. Only about a quarter of an inch thick, the solar panels can simply be glued on top of existing streets and are durable（耐用的）enough to bear heavy traffic and weather conditions.

    Despite the bad traffic Parisians associate with their journey to work every day, the average French roadway is packed for only 10 percent of the day, according to Colas' figures. That will leave the solar street with the majority of the day to gather energy from the sun, which makes the project quite promising. The panels collect solar power through a thin layer of polycrystalline silicon（多晶硅）and change it into electricity. Electrical connections can be put into existing traffic structures.

    France won't be the first country to roll out a solar road. A 70-meter solar bike path was set up in the Netherlands in 2014. Within six months, the path had created enough to power a house for an entire year.

    During the two and a half years since I settled down in Germany, I've caught a cold several times and gotten to experience how different German cold remedies (疗法)are from the Chinese ones.

    Back in Taiwan, whenever I had a streaming nose and a dry throat, I'd rush to the hospital to get prescribed medicine. For a fever, I would receive a red pill, which I now know is a type of antibiotic (抗生素).

    Another thing I know now is that the criminal behind my cold is a virus. The drugs I used only relieved the symptoms. When I went to a German hospital intending to get some medicine to treat my cold, I got nothing more than a pat on my shoulder and words from the doctor, saying that I should get some really good rest. The first time this happened, I was shocked. I wondered how I could put up with my sickness without the help of medicine. But the longer I stayed in Germany, the better I knew how to self-medicate as other Germans do.

    I learned to take vitamin C to build up my resistance. But what I like the most is drinking "Erkaltungstee". For German people, Erkaltungstee is what their grandmother gives them when they catch a cold. It's a tea bag mainly made of lime flower and orange rind. Another popular cold remedy in Germany is chicken soup. During my first winter in Germany, I got a really bad cold. My neighbor brought me a bowl of chicken soup to make me feel better. It contained a lot of ginger, onion, garlic, carrots and celery. Germans believe these ingredients are perfect for helping your body recover.

The Harbourside Development is one of the world's most exciting places to shop. It's built right on the edge of Sydney Harbour, and there are over 200 shops, selling everything from home­made sweets to the very latest clothes in fashion; from Australian souvenirs to Swiss watches and Japanese cameras.

The Australian Wildlife Park has been specially built to give people an extra close look at Australia's native animals. Have your photo taken with a kangaroo，touch and feed koala bears. There are talks every afternoon about these animals, which are only found in this part of the world. There is also an excellent souvenir shop.

A visit to the Australian Museum is like an adventure across Australia. There are shows on the people and their way of life and the whole continent. Talks and guided tours help to make your visit unforgettable. There's also a café and a good book shop, selling excellent maps.

Taronga Zoo has Australia's finest collection of rainforest birds and sea­life centre which has many of the fish that can be found off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. Taronga is also famous for its large group of South East Asian monkeys. Fast food can be got at cafés.