Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.

    During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport（护照）.

    He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.

    Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband's name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶） that had been left out on the footpath.

    My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents（文件）. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.

    That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.

    “The car of tomorrow” runs one of the most famous businesses in advertising. People used to believe that science would promise a future of endless spare time and very cheap electricity. Nowadays the scientists' predictions are a great deal less optimistic: a world challenged by climate change and decreasing resources.

    In fact, “the car of the future” is just a symbol of hope. Carbon emis-Investment in new technology to maximize efficiency (效率) and minimize environmental damage is not only cleaning up the automobile producers' act but is also setting an example to other industries.

    It's said that most cars of today run at about 15 per cent efficiency, which does highlight the potential (突显潜力) for improvement. Get it right, and we could continue to enjoy the freedom that comes with owning a car, without the worries.

    Of course, many advances have already been made. There's evidence that the buying public is eager to switch to cleaner, greener cars. And with petrol prices increasing there is no doubt that economical, efficient engines are going to be in ever greater demand.

    The good news is that we can all drive “the car of tomorrow” today, without having to worry about the purchase cost. By choosing our holiday hire cars wisely we can cut down on our fuel costs and experience an eco-friendly drive whether or not we have already made the commitment back home. What's more, we are caring for the beautiful places we love to holiday in. Hire a green car and you make a difference to the environment.

    Designers will always enjoy catching our imagination with “concept cars” that look more like miniature spaceships than anything you see on the highway. Whether vehicles as radical (激进的) as these creations will eventually become family cars remains to be seen. But, for the moment, there's no doubt at all what “the car of tomorrow” will be, and it's here today: something familiar and friendly that does its job with considerably less trouble and much greater efficiency than the car of yesterday.

    A 525-year-old copy of a letter by Christopher Columbus, stolen from the Vatican, was returned this week. An investigation by the United States Department of Homeland Security and the Vatican located the letter.

    “We are returning it to its rightful owner, “said U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, Callista Gingrich, at a ceremony in the Vatican Library. Columbus wrote the letter to the king and queen of Spain after discovering “The New World.” He described what he had found and requested money for another trip. His original letter was written in Spanish. But several copies of a Latin translation were made to spread news of his discovery to the royal courts of Europe and the Pope.

    One of the Latin letters, copied by Stephan Plannack in 1493, was put in the Vatican Library. Known as the Columbus Letter, it has eight pages, each about 18.5 cm by 12 cm. In 2011, an American expert in rare manuscripts received a similar looking letter. After reviewing it, he decided that it was real. The year before, the same expert had studied a Columbus Letter in the Vatican Library and suspected that it was a fake. One reason was that the stitching (针脚) marks on the letter were not the same as those on the cover. The letter in the United States, however, had the exact same stitching marks as the leather cover of the fake letter he had studied in the Vatican.

    The expert, who was not identified, contacted Homeland Security art investigators, who began working with Vatican inspectors and rare book experts. They believed that someone took the real letter out of its cover at the Vatican Library and replaced it with an artificial one. Archbishop Jean-Louis Brugues is the Vatican's chief librarian. He said, “We do not know exactly when the substitution took place. We will probably never know who the forger (伪造者) was.”

    Their investigations found that Marino Massimo De Caro, a well-known Italian book thief, had sold the real letter to a New York book dealer. De Caro is serving a seven-year prison sentence in Italy for stealing about 4,000 ancient books and manuscripts from Italian libraries and private collections. The late collector David Parsons bought the letter for $875,000 in 2004. After the investigations, his widow agreed to return the letter to the Vatican Library. Officials said the letter is now worth about $1.2 million.

    College is not just about studying, writing essays and burning the midnight oil in the library. Making friends and enjoying yourself is also necessary for the courses. Parties are social events for students to gather and chat with each other.

    Now let's follow a foreign friend to see what parties in the US are like. Get some inspiration to have fun with your friends in your new life.

    Drinking and music College parties in the US are always lacking in creativity and full of wine and music. The basic form rarely changes — drink until you cannot anymore and play loud music at an earth-shaking volume. There is plenty of beer involved, and some mixed cocktails.

    Creativity in dress

    The creativity comes in how parties are dressed up. Parties often have a specific theme, like a 90s party or a sports party. At a 90s party, guests might show up dressed like once-famous celebrities. At a sports party, guests might wear their favorite team's uniforms.

    Held in apartments

    The party is usually held in the apartment of a particular outgoing friend. Everyone will be invited, which means strangers will wander in and out of the apartment where you can get to know and make some new friends.

    Ugly sweater party

    On holidays, parties frequently take on a proper theme. A popular theme around Christmas is the ugly sweater party. The goal is to wear the ugliest sweater you can find, creating an atmosphere of fun.

    Whatever the occasion is, there will be no shortage of booze. If you are smart enough, you won't have so much as to lose your consciousness. Parties are always better when you can remember them the next day.

    When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine decided to visit England by car. Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find accommodation. I suggested that they should stay at 'bed and breakfast' houses, because this kind of accommodation gives a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.

"We didn't stay at bed and breakfast houses," they said, "because we found that most families were away on holiday."

I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought 'VACANCIES' meant 'holidays', because the Spanish word for 'holidays" is 'vacancies'. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said 'VACANCIES', which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said 'NO VACANCLES', because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. As a result, they stayed at hotels!

    We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word 'DIVERSION' means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word 'DIVERSION' on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hole.

English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris, when someone offered me some more coffee, I said "Thank you" in French. I meant that I would like some more. However, to my surprise the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that "Thank you" in French means "No, thank you."

    I had about 10 minutes to exercise before I had to pick up my two older daughters from school yesterday. It was a busier day than usual for me with a couple of meetings besides my regular work.

    Years ago, I would have put off my workout and would have left things for the next day. But since it was a busy day as well, I knew that I may not have all that much time either. So, I picked up my kettle-bell (哑铃) and went to town for 4 minutes.

    See, 4 minutes, if that's all you've got, is enough to give your body a great fat-burning exercise. How did I get a killer workout in 4 minutes? I used a training workout discovered 10 years ago by a Japanese Sports Scientist called a TABATA.

    It includes 20-second periods of warm-up, followed by 10-second periods of rest and 4-minute straight exercise. How is a 4-minute exercise able to burn fat? It all depends on the quality of work you do. Not on the quantity. Here's how I did it yesterday.

    You should never forget your warm-up. A TABATA workout is 20 seconds of 2-arm Kettle-bell swings, 10 seconds rest, 20 seconds push-ups, and 10 seconds rest. You should do those 4 rounds. That's it. I was done in a total time of 8 minutes by the time and when I got to school my heart was still pumping pretty hard.

    A healthy body is needed for studying and working, and efficiency (效率) is the key to building a great body in the least amount (数量) of time possible and you can't get more efficient than a 4-minute workout.