Living among trees, plants and flowers can fill your life with beauty. And if you are a woman, it can also help you live longer. Researchers found that women who live in homes surrounded by plants appear to have lower death rates than women who live in areas with fewer plants.

    Researchers at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health reported the finding. They looked at the information from one of the largest and oldest investigations of the women's health: the Nurse's Health Study. It began 40 years ago. It now has information on nearly 200,000 women.

    For the new study, the team looked at the death rates of more than 100,000 women between the years 2000 and 2008. Then the researchers compared the death rates of these women to the plants around their homes. The researchers also considered other things, such as the age of the women, money they earn and race. They also looked at whether or not the women smoked.

    The study found that the death rate among women who lived in the greenest spaces was 12% lower than those from the least green areas. The researchers were surprised to find such a strong connection between high vegetation levels and low death rates.

    The study suggested that living among trees, flowers and other plants lowered levels of depression. Researchers said women in greener areas spent more time with other people and exercised more. It is common knowledge that plants can help the environment in many ways. The new finding also suggested ways to the government and the city planners to grow even healthier living areas.

    Whether you're up for a Crocodile Dundee's adventure or you'd just like a taste of the Australian sun, the beaches in and around Sydney can offer you all that and more.

Sydney Beach

    Sydney Beach is located at Sydney's northernmost tip on an extension(延伸) of land ending at Palm Beach. Before checking out the golden sand, take a quick tour of the houses of millionaires from the art and film industries.

Palm Beach

    Only about an hour from downtown Sydney, Palm Beach offers a long stretch(延伸) of clean sand and water. With parking near the center of the beach, that leaves the rest of it as a peaceful location with a sparse population, from which you can go surfing but take care — without the huge crowds of other Sydney's beaches, Palm Beach doesn't afford quite the safety level to be found elsewhere. Volunteer lifesavers are on duty only on weekends and holidays.

Bondi Beach

    For the famous beach, Bondi Beach has to be your choice. Parking is difficult to find even on slow days, so consider taking public transport to this world—known beach in the eastern Sydney suburbs. Easily reachable by taxi, bus, and rail, Bondi Beach offers sun bathing, swimming, snorkeling, and all sorts of water sports fun. If you're in the mood for a bit of exercise, two scenic coastal walks will afford you great views and sights along the shore. Take in views from Mackenzie's Point. It starts at Bondi and heads south to Bronte Beach. But don't try to swim in Mackenzie's Bay — it holds dangers such as hidden rocks.

Bronte Beach

    Your second choice for a scenic coastal walk covers a few miles and takes you from Bronte Beach to Waverly Cemetery, where many famous Australians are buried, including the poet Henry Lawson.

    Recently I had a conversation in Beijing with an adult Chinese friend who was complaining how difficult it was to study English. No surprises there. It is a difficult language to master, just like Chinese. I made a few suggestions based on my experience. One involved a very valuable fact which I learned from my high school Latin and Greek teacher, Dr. Smith．He is a gifted linguist （语言学家），and has an amazing ability to remember things, like poetry, essays, speeches, etc．His advice to us students is that for memorization purposes, there is forty minutes each day in which our memory is more acceptable than it is during the other 23 hours and 20 minutes.

    This 40-minute "super memory" period is divided into two parts: the 20 minutes before we sleep, and the 20 minutes after we first awake. The theory supporting this is pretty simple. First, the last information we input into our brain before bed has a better chance of taking root than information gained during the noisy daytime; and second, our mind is free of disturbance(干扰) when we first awake in the morning一so more receptive to inputs, like a blank slate（石板）．

    I took the advice to heart and it served me well in my school years. In my university days, our Chinese teacher would assign us 200 new vocabulary words each day, on which we would be quizzed（测试）the following day. Without the "magic" 40-minute technique, there's no way I would have passed those daily quizzes.

    As far as language study goes, it's not only useful for memorizing vocabulary. It's also a very useful window of time to listen to the language we're studying even with background noise, and even if it's at a level we find difficult to understand. It might be audio（声音的）language study, aids, or just radio, TV or whatever.

    Beyond our years of formal(正式的) education, memory skills are hugely important in any career. How many times have we heard a speaker read their speech from a prepared text, or read the word-by-word content of a PowerPoint presentation as they present each slide（投影片）? These are annoying, boring, and less effective ways of communicating. They are almost guaranteed(保证) to lose the audience's close attention and interest, let alone persuade or inspire anyone to do anything. And yet lots of people still make this mistake.

    If we use the 40-minute technique, we may not succeed in memorizing our presentation content on a 100% word-by-word basis, but we'll be familiar enough so that we can spend much more time making eye contact with our audience. We will get them in the process, while looking at our text instead of staring at it. This will also free up our hands and arms to convey some extra messages through gesture．

    As you see, the technique really works, but like many things, it takes practice to perfect it. Therefore, we'd better find ways to use the language outside of the classroom, as regularly and frequently as possible. One basic rule of language learning is, "Use it, or lose it·”

Seize the forty-minute learning window and we'll bring in a rich harvest of language learning.

    So many of us hold on to little resentments that may have come from an argument, a misunderstanding, or some other painful event. Stubbornly, we wait for someone else to reach out to us—believing this is the only way we can forgive or rekindle a friendship or family relationship.

    An acquaintance of mine, whose health isn't very good, recently told me that she hadn't spoken to her son in almost three years. She said that she and her son had had a disagreement about his wife and that she wouldn't speak to him again unless he called first. When I suggested that she be the one to reach out, she resisted initially and said, "I can't do that. He's the one who should apologize." She was literally willing to die before reaching out to her only son. After a little gentle encouragement, however, she did decide to be the first one to reach out. To her amazement, her son was grateful for her willingness to call and offered an apology of his own. As is usually the case when someone takes the chance and reaches out, everyone wins.

    Whenever we hold on to our anger, we turn "small stuff" into really "big stuff" in our minds. We start to believe that our positions are more important than our happiness. They are not. If you want to be a more peaceful person you must understand that being right is almost never more important than allowing yourself to be happy. The way to be happy is to let go, and reach out. Let other people be right. This doesn't mean that you're wrong. Everything will be fine. You'll experience the peace of letting go, as well as the joy of letting others be right.

    You'll also notice that, as you reach out and let others be "right," they will become less defensive and more loving toward you. They might even reach back. But if for some reason they don't, that's okay too. You'll have the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done your part to create a more loving world, and certainly you'll be more peaceful yourself.

    "Be proud of what you do"(对你所做的感到骄傲), my father always told me, "whether you are a boss （老板）or a cleaner", When I was 15, I got a summer job in a hospital, I was told that my duties would include sweeping floors. I smiled and remembered Dad's words. Even though my job was the lowest, it made me feel excited. I saw it as a challenge because it was my first job. I learned to be on time and tried to do everything well. In return(作为回报), I was treated with respect（尊重） by doctors, nurses and patients. Each morning I imagined that the dirty dishes would make patients more sick if I were not there to wash them clean. After breakfast was done, I started sweeping the floors of all patient rooms and cleaning toilets. Though I was tired, I wanted the job to be done well, people would say, "That young boy really does a good job." That gave me a pride. Working in the hospital taught me that being proud of one's job is important. It does not matter whether the job is sweeping floors or managing a large business. Though every job I have ever had, my father's words have always stayed with me, I have swept floors, and I have been a manager（经理）. I think Dad would be proud of me!

    Tom arrived at the bus station quite early for the London bus. The bus for London would not leave until five to twelve. He saw a lot of people waiting in the station. Some were standing in lines, others were walking about. There was a group of school-girls. Their teacher was trying to keep them in order. Tom looked around but there was nowhere for him to sit.

    He walked into the station cafe. He looked up at the clock there. It was only twenty to twelve. He found a seat and sat down, facing a large mirror(镜子) on the wall. Just then, John, one of Tom's friends, came in and sat with Tom.

    "What time is your bus?" asked John.

    "Oh, there is plenty of time yet," answered Tom.

    "Oh, I'll get you some more tea then," said John.

    They talked while drinking. Then Tom looked at the clock again.

    "Good heavens! It's going backward!" he cried. "A few minutes ago it was twenty to twelve and now it's half past eleven."

    "You are looking at the clock in the mirror," said John.

    Tom wanted to kick himself for being so foolish. The next bus was not to leave for another hour. He has never liked mirror since then.