Time zone:

    Eastern Standard Time (EST): GMT+l0 hours.

    There is no daylight saving time in Queensland.

    Legal drinking age:

    18 years and older. Always keep your ID with you to prove your age.

    Alcohol (酒) shops & hotels are the only places where alcohol can be bought.

    Dangers:

    Dial 000 from a fixed line or 112 from a mobile phone. Police, ambulance, fire.

    Electricity:

    240/250 volts AC 50Hz Universal outlets for 110 volts (shavers only) standard in hotels, apartments, motels.

    Telephones:

    Australian international code is 61.

    Road rules:

    Left hand side driving. There is a 50kmh speed limit in most living areas and on open highways 100-110 kmh, seat belts must be worn all the time. If you want to hire a car, take along your driver's license.

No smoking:

    Indoors: Indoor areas are no smoking.

    Poker Machines: Poker machine areas are no smoking.

    Outdoors: Non-enclosed eating and drinking areas are no smoking.

Swimming safety:

    ALWAYS SWIM BET WEEN THE RED AND YELLOW FLAGS and pay attention to the life guards' advice. Gold coast beaches are guarded by skilled life guards and volunteers at weekends.

    The more interested you are in a topic, the more likely you may be to form “false memories” about the events related to that topic.

    “Most people are pretty confident about their own memory for some events, but new research shows that false memory is a lot more frequent than many people realize. In terms of daily life, the key point here may be to understand that someone who remembers an event differently from yours isn't necessarily lying—someone's memory may be faulty, or it might be you,” said study co-author Ciara Greene, a psychologist at the university College Dublin.

    In the study, the researchers asked 489 people to read four news stories about events that were related to the topics they ranked as the most interesting, and four stories about events related to the topics they rated as the least interesting. In each case, three of these events really did occur, but the fourth one was made up.

    It turned out that people tended to remember the stories of the topics they said they were more interested in compared with the topics they were not interested in. However, the participants also tended to store more false memories related to the topics they were interested in compared with the topics they were not interested in, the researchers found.

    The more people know about a topic, the more memories related to this topic they have stored in their brains, the researchers said. Therefore, when a person meets new information on this topic, that information may find traces of similar memories that have already stored in the brain, Greene said.

    “This can result in a sense of familiarity or recognition of the new material, leading to the conviction (确信) that the information has been met before and is in fact an existing memory,” Greene said. In other words, this new material or information may “feel” familiar and therefore the person may believe it must be true, he said.

    Learning more about how false memories work may help protect against the harmful results of them, such as when eyewitness accounts(证言) of crimes are faulty.

    As the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, mooncakes are turning up all over China, from traditional teashops to Starbucks counters. The holiday is one of China's four most important festivals, and in the weeks before the date arrives, top hotels get into the spirit with lavish(奢华) treats in lovely packaging. Traditionally, the cookie-sized round pastry(馅饼) has a rich thick filling usually made from red-bean or lotus-seed paste and covered by a thin crust. It may also contain yolks from salted duck eggs, integrating a beautiful savory tinge into the sugary taste. Fillings and crusts have become more diverse over time, especially in the hands of skilled pastry chefs. The mooncakes in Chinese culture represent homesickness, and the top crust of each moon-shaped pastry is generally imprinted with the Chinese characters for longevity or harmony.

    This year, the fancy gift boxes that have long driven the mooncake trade are particularly striking and rich with tradition.

    For example, the Fairmont Peace Hotel in Shanghai, built in 1929 and a magnet for Hollywood celebrities in the 1930s, has prepared a selection of mooncake gift boxes with designs inspired by the beauty and elegance of the hotel's famous art deco style. The simplest box of four pieces (red-bean paste, creamy custard, plain cheese, green-bean paste) is 198 yuan($29.64), while more lavish selections of five or six pieces, including mooncakes with egg yolk, run up to 338 yuan for a box.

    Beijing's Nuo Hotel, meanwhile, has created Ming Dynasty (1368－1644) inspired mooncake gift packs based on the design of porcelain vases in the hotel lobby, with the essence of landscape painting using Zhang Dai's poetic passages to show the peaceful harmony of man and nature. The box of six is 158 yuan, and includes mooncakes ranging from cheese mango to charcoal burning fragrant Pu'er tea and white lotus with egg yolk. A box of eight cakes of different flavors is 228 yuan.

    Paul and Jason were brothers who lived and worked on neighboring farms. For 35 years they farmed side by side, sharing machinery and goods as needed, without a single problem.

    However, one autumn, things changed. It began with a tiny disagreement about a horse, which grew into a major difference. The difference led to angry words, followed by weeks of silence between the two brothers.

One morning there was a knock on Paul's door. He opened it and saw a builder holding his toolbox. "I'm looking for a few days' work." the builder said. "Are there any jobs here I could help with?"

"Yes," answered Paul, extremely pleased to see the builder. "I do have a job for you. Look at that farm across the creek(小溪).That's my brother's farm. That creek used to be a grass field, but last week my brother dug a path from the river and made the creek. But I'll go him one better. See that pile of wood? I want you to build me a fence, two meters tall, so 1 won't need to see him anymore."

The builder said thoughtfully. "I think I understand the situation and I'll be able to do a job that pleases you."

    Paul had business in town that day and left the builder to his work. When he returned, the builder had just finished his job. Paul was shocked. Instead of a fence there was a bridge, stretching from one side of the creek to the other.

As Paul stood on the bridge, staring in amazement, his younger brother Jason, came across, and took Paul's hand. "You are a good man to have built this bridge after all I've done," said Jason.

Then, Paul, with tears in his eyes, said to the builder who was packing his bag to go, "Thank you so much. Please stay. I have much more for you to do."

"I'd love to." the builder said quietly, "but, I have many more bridges to build."

    There are a growing number of pet owners who feed their pets on raw foods, which means "uncooked" meat and bones. William Burk, a pet food specialist from the Food and Drug Administration(FDA), believes that feeding raw meat to pets is against its goal of protecting the public from health dangers, and that raw meat and bones do not have all the required nutrition that a pet needs every day.

    Recognizing how popular these foods are, the FDA has provided guidelines for producers of pet foods which contain uncooked meat for dogs, cats and other pets. The guidelines give rules to protect pet owners and pets from dangers about food safety and lack of nutrition.

    Pet owners who feed raw meat and bones to their pets should deal with these products very carefully to protect themselves against possible dangers, says Burk. Just as when you are preparing foods for human beings, use hot water and soap to wash your hands, containers, and surfaces that come into contact with the food. Don't put your hands near your mouth until you have washed them, and don't allow your pet to touch your face right after it has eaten raw meat.

    "If pet owners choose to feed bones to their pets, they should watch their pets carefully when they are eating bones," Burk says, "If a pet eats a big piece of bone that won't pass through its digestive system(消化系统), it is likely to kill the pet."

    Have you ever heard of agritourism where you can experience farm life? If not, Dr. Cindy Ayers-Elliott will tell you the real story of Foot Print Farms.

    The original concept of building Foot Print Farms was simple. When Ayers-Elliott returned to her hometown after graduation, she didn't have to look any further than her state's alarming health statistics to find a mission. Everywhere she turned, there were reports of high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. "The problem was already identified." explains Ayers-Elliott. "Too many Mississippians were seriously unhealthy and it didn't take research to see that. And many of the state's greatest health challenges could directly result from poor diet. "

    These days, Foot Print Farms, which started with a few raised beds of herbs and vegetables, is making fresh, naturally grown food. "When speaking of the key to my success, the co-op model works because we share the work and rewards," notes Ayers-Elliott. "A perfect example is the Wingfield High School football team. To earn the money for equipment and other items, players committed to working five hours a week on the farm, and by the end of the summer they had produced 1, 000 melons and the profits from their sales helped to buy weights, T-shirts, sweat suits and pregame meals. But the lessons they learned about the rewards of hard work and working together to accomplish something were even more valuable products of their efforts."

    "It' s a model that can easily be learned in other places and I' m looking forward to seeing some of our current partners do just that——to take what they have learned here and spin it off in other communities," Ayers-Elliott remarks. She is now looking forward to developing an agritourism aspect to the farm, where visitors can experience farm life, learn new skills and take with them seeds of inspiration they can sow in their own communities when they return home.