The all-new Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, situated in the heart of Melbourne's CBD, is one of Victoria's leading visitor attractions and an unforgettable outing for the whole family. Having 12 amazing zones of discovery, Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is the very place that you cannot miss when you visit the city.

* Opening Times

     Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is open from 9:30 am until 6:00 pm every day of the year, including public holidays. Last admission is at 5:00 pm, one hour before closing.

* Location ( 位置)

     Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is located on the corner of Flinders Street and King Street, Melbourne. It is siyuated on the Yarra River, opposite Crown Entertainment Complex.

* Getting to Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium

     Train

     The Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium train stop is located on the free City Circle Tram route (公交线路) and also routes 70 and 75. City Circle trams run every 10 minutes in both directions.

     Shuttle Bus

     The Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is a free bus service, stopping at key tourist attractions in and around the City. Running daily, every 15 minutes from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

      Car Parking

      While there is no public car parking at Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, there are several public car parking lots available only a short walk away.

* Wheelchair Access

      Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium provides people in wheelchairs with full access to all 12 zones. Each floor also has wheelchair accessible toilets.

* Terms

      Tickets will be emailed to you immediately after purchase or you can download and print your ticket once payment has been accepted. Please print out all tickets purchased and present at the front entrance of Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium. No ticket, no entry!

    You've probably heard about sports coaches, fitness coaches, voice and music teachers, career counselors（咨询） psychiatrists (精神科医师) and other specialists who teach skills and help us cope with daily life.

    But there's a rapidly growing kind of professionals who do a little bit of everything. She or he is called a “ life coach”. People who are at the crossroads in their life, and corporations that want to give certain employees a career boost , are turning to them for help.

    The idea that one person's success story can change other people's life for the better goes back at least to the 1930s. Dale Carneigie's famous self-improvement program “ How to Win Friends and Influence People” came along soon thereafter.

    But this new style of life coaches includes more than enthusiastic speakers or writers. They use their own experiences in business, sports, military service, or psychotherapy (心理疗法) to help others make critical life decisions. They often give their approaches a slogan, such as “energy coaching” or “fearless living” or “working yourself happy”.

    Dave Lakhani in Boise, Idaho, for instance, works with salespeople to develop what he calls a “road map”. He says an ongoing relationship with a coach is like having a personal fitness trainer for one's career and life outside work.

Lakhani's Bold Approach coaching firm also donates some of its time to help people who are anything but successful—including battered (殴打) women and struggling single mothers.

    But others in the so-called “helping professions” are not thrilled about the life-coaching movement. They say that anyone, trained or untrained, can call himself or herself a life coach, and that slick(华而不实的) promoters who mess with people's lives can do more harm than good.

    To prevent the deserts coming near, China has planted billions of trees—to replace destroyed forests and as barriers against the sand. This isn't a cure, though, say experts, as thirsty trees can make the problem worse by taking in groundwater.

    “Planting tress is one way, but it isn't that simple. It doesn't solve the basic issue of water resources,” says Wu Bo, a professor. “We need to calculate how much water the trees will absorb, or else it could have a negative effect.”

    Villagers in Zhengxin have taken on this challenge, with limited success. When the irrigation channels began to run dry, Lu Xianglin switched from wheat to cotton on his land. He also planted trees to protect his fields from sandstorms. He says he still gets good yields（产量） using flood irrigation and earns a good income for his family.

    Other farmers haven't stuck it out（坚持到底）: about one in three have left Zhengxin in the past 10 years after their wheat crops died. Young people who can find jobs in the towns rarely return.

    Last week, Mr Lu joined the other men in his village on a government-arranged trip to see the land that has been set aside for their relocation, nearly 40 miles to the south. The next day, he was back, shaking his head at the plan. The idea of uprooting his family troubles him, as does the idea of giving up the land that fed his forefathers. He prefers to stay and keep up the fight.

    “With enough water, this problem can be solved,” Lu says. “We can plant trees and grass, and they will grow bigger. That will stop the desert.”

    Experts say that farmers could switch to drip irrigation （滴灌）to lessen their water intake for growing crops. Elsewhere in the region, farmers have built brick greenhouses as part of a plan to grow vegetables using less water. Roadside signs urge farmers to “Save Water, Protect the Environment”.

    Do you like eating processed meat? If you do, think twice now if you want to eat such meat for the sake of your health. Why? It's because eating processed meat can cause cancer, World Health Organization (WHO) experts said last Monday.

    Processed meat is the meat that has been preserved by salting, smoking, drying or canning. Experts from the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France studied 800 patients. The experts connected processed meat, such as hot dogs and bacon, with at least three kinds of cancer. A person who eats 50 grams of processed meat per day—about two pieces of bacon—increases his or her risk of bowel(肠) cancer by 18 percent.

    The IARC has included processed meat in its Group 1 list, for which there is “enough evidence” of connection with cancer. Tobacco is also on the Group 1 list.

WHO experts also say red meat, including beef, lamb and pork, is “probably” carcinogenic (致癌的) to humans. Dr. Kurt Strait is with the IARC. He said in a statement that the risk of cancer increases with the amount of meat a person eats. Health experts in some countries advised against eating large amounts of red and processed meat. But those suggestions had been centered on the increased risk of heart disease and obesity.

    However, meat industry groups protest the result of the WHO study. They say that meat is part of a balanced diet. They also say the causes of cancer are broad, and include environment and lifestyle factors.

    The WHO report cites the Global Burden of Disease project, which shows that diets high in processed meat lead to 34,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide.

    My father loves his garden. He planted some seeds in it. But at that time I didn't understand why working in the dirt excited him so much.

    Unfortunately, in early May, my father was seriously injured in an accident. He had to stay in bed for a while. My mother had several business trips so she couldn't take care of the garden. I didn't want my father to worry, so I said that I would take care of his garden until he recovered. I assumed that the little plants would continue to grow as long as they had water, and luckily it rained fairly often so I didn't think much about the garden.

    One Saturday morning, my father said to me, "Christine, the vegetables should be about ready to be picked. Let's have a salad today!" I went out to the garden and was upset to see that many of the lettuce leaves and carrots had been half eaten by bugs. There were hundreds of bugs all over them!

    I panicked for a moment, but then I quietly went to the nearest store to buy some vegetables.

    When I gave the salad to him, he said, "Oh, Christine, what a beautiful salad! I can't believe the carrots are this big already. You must be taking very good care of my garden." I felt a little bit guilty.

    Coming home, my mother saw the bag from the supermarket in the kitchen. I was embarrassed and I admitted, "Dad wanted a salad, but the garden was a disaster. I didn't want to disappoint him so I went to the store." She laughed but promised to help me in the garden and weeks later I was finally able to pick some.

    I carefully made a salad and took it to my father. He looked at it with a hint of a smile. "Christine the carrots are smaller in this salad, but they taste better."

    Now, I better understand how putting a lot of effort into caring for something can help you appreciate the results more, however small they maybe. Perhaps this was one of the reasons for my father's love of gardening.

The famous Spanish painter Pablo Picasso once said, "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." It strikes a chord(引起共鸣) with me because that's exactly what I have been doing these years.

One of my earliest memories of doing before learning is baking scones(烤饼) when I was about 10 years old. I wanted to bake them to surprise my mother when she returned home.

Before that, I'd observed how my mother baked them many times. As I started to try, I didn't know I shouldn't handle the dough(面团) with my hands too much once I'd added the baking powder(发酵粉). However, I knew exactly how to roll out the dough and use a cookie cutter to cut the scones, because my mom had already taught me.

By the time my mom arrived home, the smell of freshly baked scones welcomed her into the kitchen. They were close to perfection—flat, as a result of overhandling the dough, but they tasted OK. My mom sweetly praised me for my attempt, rather than scolding me for the state of the kitchen, which was like a tornado had just blown!

Have my attempts always been successful? I wish! Some of my kitchen disasters were so terrible that even the dogs wanted nothing to do with them. My gardening failures didn't live to see another season.

But my habit of doing before learning is still helpful. Whatever new software I have to learn how to use, I do so by simply starting to use it. I do, learn, and improve. So if you ask me whether I regret that I tend to do first and learn later, I'd say I don't, because what I have discovered from those is the wisdom to know when it's OK to do and then learn, and when it's probably better to learn and then do!