【推荐1】It was in 1965 when I was 6 years old that my family moved to Elmont. It was a wonderful place to grow up. There were lots of kids, great schools and we had a big yard. Having grown up a city kid, my father, Nicholas Denaro, believed that grass was not just to look at, but that children were meant to play on it. We played games and badminton there. A white fence separated our backyard from a small wood. My friends and I enjoyed jumping the fence and climbing trees.

My father had the most amazing hand. He could fix anything. He gave those amazing hands to his son, my younger brother, Frank, who also became handy around the house. But my father saved his green fingers for me. He grew flowers, tomatoes, strawberries and figs and he shared his love of gardening with me.

Fourteen years ago, my husband and I went to a local nursery and bought a fig tree for Dad for Father's Day. My mother, Bridget Denaro, called it the best gift I could have given him. He planted it exactly in the middle of the front yard.

He loved that tree and enjoyed delicious figs every year, except just after Sandy hit in 2012. He was so disappointed when cold weather just after the superstorm froze all the remaining figs.

In 2015, my father died of lung cancer at 97. We sold our family home of 61 years last year. We left behind Dad's tree, full of figs waiting to ripen. We briefly considered taking it with us, but decided that his Father's Day fig tree belonged in Elmont. The new owners generously allowed me to take some branches so that I could have a precious reminder of my much-loved father and the Elmont home.

【推荐2】On Monday, I stopped my car in front of my daughter Juliet’s middle school. She jumped in the front seat, feeling down. She asked me to help her study for her science test.

“Dad, I need to memorize a unit about the Reproductive Cycle of Plants. And I can hardly make it.”

“You know memorizing seems like the best way to study, but in fact you can do better in tests if you work on trying to understand the material.”

Juliet was open to my advice. It was Monday afternoon and we had two nights to study before the test on Wednesday. I suggested a plan. “Tomorrow night, you are going to teach the material to me. Tonight, read the unit. Prepare to teach.”

Asking her to teach me was an unusual idea but I was determined to do it. Studies show teaching somebody else is a very useful way to learn. Even if you don’t do the teaching, the act of preparing to teach leads to more learning than just trying your best to memorize the material.

On Tuesday afternoon, Juliet sat down with her science book facing me and said, “Okay Dad, let’s study.” I wanted her to teach me. But false starts happened. I couldn’t be too hard on her. So instead we started with me asking her some simple questions. She knew some but not others. When she didn’t know the answers, I encouraged her to check the book.

She started checking things that didn’t make sense. And she was actively seeking to test her understanding. I was happy to see it. She wasn’t memorizing; she was trying to make sense of things, which was exactly what I had hoped she would do.

【推荐3】The important things to consider when planning a multi-generational holiday trip

Take the whole family to a beach or a mountain, forming holiday memories that will last a lifetime. Whether those memories are pleasant or not will depend on a lot of things, but the one you can control most is how well you plan the trip. Multi-generational travel is different from planning for just yourself or your family.     1    

Perhaps your family is happy to have one person take control. But you may have newer family members who consider vacation planning a more collective experience. If that’s the case, you need to make sure they feel like they had some input in the process, or you won’t get much participation.     2    

Holiday resorts are likely a better choice than a big house or hotels, both because they offer separate condos (公寓式旅馆) where people can operate on their own schedules and because they offer activities, meals, and other entertainment (消遣) you won’t have to plan. Condos also often come with kitchens, if you do feel like having dinner at home a couple of times.     3     You might not want to share a hotel room with your brother and his wife, for example. But sharing a two-bedroom condo--which is usually about the same price — just feels like being roommates.

So finding a resort with activities that fit as many people’s interests as possible is key.     4     Your cousins may prefer doing food tours. Your father-in-law may just want a big pool. Regardless of what your family enjoys, think about everyone’s interest—or at least what you know of them—and find a place that has as many as possible.

    5     Even if you’re leading the trip planning, leave group-activity planning to the people who want to do it as they’ll have the most drive and motivation (动机) to make it happen. Don’t force anyone into doing activities they aren’t interested in doing. So once you’re there, try your best to have a good time with them.

【推荐1】Parties and social gatherings no longer excite us the same way they once did. This is not due to a lack of desire to socialize, but the smartphone.

At parties, more people are on their smartphones than on their drinks. According to a recent International Data Corporation study, well over half of all Americans have a smartphone and reach for it the moment they wake up, keeping it in hand all day. In addition, too many people in society are using smartphones while driving and as a result, they get into car crashes. 34 percent of teenagers admit to texting while driving, and they confirm that text messaging is their number one driving interruption. People’s attachment to their smartphones is unbelievably becoming more important than the lives of themselves and others.

Just as drivers dismiss the importance of focusing while on the road, many people also fail to recognize the significance of human interaction. When with their friends, some people pointlessly check or send text messages in the presence of a friend, which sends a message to that friend: the person I am texting is more important than you.   In addition, relying on our smartphones to make friends does not give us the same advantage as being able to make new friendships in the real world. Face-to-face conversations will give us much stronger communication skills in the long run.

As many people risk their lives and the lives of people around them just to send a text or mindlessly check their messages, smartphones are in many ways more dangerous to people. The quality of this technology is hindering(阻碍) social achievements and weakening the value of communication. Not only is the smartphone affecting our desire to interact (交流) face-to-face, but it is also lowering society’s ability to communicate.

【推荐2】Complaints and Appeals

UNSW Global is committed to delivering a high standard of education and training services to all of its students. One way that UNSW Global fulfills this commitment is by ensuring that all students, both domestic and international, have access to a forcefully-expressed and fair complaints and appeals process. The process for how complaints and appeals are dealt with under the Complaints and Appeals Policy, is extracted below.

Stage 1: Informal Complaint Process

You are encouraged to attempt to solve issues that arise informally by contacting either the original decision maker. Customer Service or a Student Adviser. This should be done as soon as possible after the issue arising.

Examples of informal complaints include:

• late return of assessment result

•disagreement over marks

•teacher quality feedback

•class and timetabling changes

•complaints about home stay providers

•wrong attendance recorded

Stage 2: Formal Review Process

If the Stage I: Informal Complaint Process does not resolve the complaint, you may begin the Stage 2: Formal Review Process.

You must:

1. Complete a Stage 2: Formal Review Form and email it to complainsndconduct @unswglobal. unsw. edu.au. Hardcopy forms are also available from, and may be submitted to the Student Services Center.

2. Lodge the Stage 2: Format Review Form within 10 working days of the issue arising or receiving a response to your Stage 1: Informal Complaint.

We will:

1. Refer your complaint to the appropriate person for investigation and resolution.

2. Acknowledge your complaint within in working days of receiving your Stage 2: Formal Review Form and, in some cases, contact you to arrange an interview.

3. Send you a written statement of the outcome of your complaint, including the reasons for the outcome, within 10 working days of the acknowledgement of your complaint, or of any interview conducted.

Examples include:

•bullying and harassment

•decision to cancel enrolment

•refusal to issue a refund

•refusal to allow leave of absence

Stage 3: External Appeal Process

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of a Stage 2: Formal Review Process, you may refer the case to an external body for an independent review (see section 9 of the Complaints and Appeals Policy).

If you start with an external appeal, so that your enrolment can be maintained during the appeal process, you must inform us in writing by emailing complainsandconduct @ unswglobal. unsw edu.au.

【推荐3】My sister and I spent our childhoods in a small town. Mom worked hard at her job from morning till evening — but not before sending us off to school early with our not-so-heavy bags and our lunch boxes with simple, wholesome meals. Even though we went through tough times, providing my sister and I with the best possible education remained a big priority for our mother. Education before everything else was her belief, even though it meant most of her hard-earned money was spent paying our school fees. We were always careful and economical, but somehow we never felt a sense of deprivation (贫困) in our lives.

Life for us moved at this easy, contented pace until, of course, our birthdays approached. Honestly, I did not look forward to the gifts as much as I did sharing Moms handmade chocolates, wrapped (被包裹) in shiny, colorful paper, with my classmates. Fifteen minutes before lunch, our teacher would allow us to distribute the candy. And out came the box from its hiding place under my books-and with a smile on my face and a happy heart, I would hand over two chocolates each to my friends. Then, I would rush out of the room just to enjoy the pleasure of hearing them open up the wrappers and the mouth-watering chocolates in pure delight. They would then ask me if there were a few more until I ran out of these treats entirely. Year after year, I followed the same ritual (仪式) — and it pleased me to no end each time I heard my friends say that these chocolates were unlike any they had ever tasted.

The years passed by, and as our kids grew up, they too gifted chocolates to their friends at school on their birthdays. However, none of the chocolates I offered to my child could match what Mom always had for us. Until the year Mom visited us on my child’s birthday and brought along her famous chocolates. After so many years, I finally realized the secret of the chocolate’s evergreen taste: sugar and peanuts cooked to perfection and filled with motherly affection and love in wrappers saved over months. Indeed, the best birthday treat I had ever tasted!

【推荐1】To me, life without music would not be exciting. I realize that this is not true for everybody. Many people get along quite well without going to the concert, and listening to the record. But music plays an important part in everyone's life, whether he realizes it or not. Try to imagine, for example, what films or TV plays would be like without music. Would the feelings, the moving plot, and the greatest interests, be so exciting or dramatic? I'm not sure about it.

Now, we have been speaking of music in its more common meaning----the kind of music we hear in the concert hall. But if we look at some parts of music more closely, we discover them in our everyday life too----in the rhythm of the sea, the melody of a bird in the woods and so on. So music surely has meaning for everyone, in some way or other. And, of course, it has special meaning for those who have spent all their lives working on playing or writing music.

It is well said, “Through music a child enters into a world of beauty, expresses himself from his heart, feels the joy of doing things alone, learns to take care of others, develops his mind and makes his body strong.”

【推荐2】Up till about 130 years ago, newspapers in the United States attracted only the most serious readers. They used no illustration (插图) and the articles were about politics or business.

Two men changed that - Joseph Pulitzer bought the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal. Pulitzer bought the New York World in 1883. He changed it from a traditional newspaper into a very exciting one overnight. He added lots of illustrations and he told his reporters to write articles on every crime they could find. And they did. One of them-a woman reporter, even pretended she was mad and was sent to a hospital. She then wrote many articles about the poor treatment of patients in those hospitals where mad men were kept.

In 1895, Hearst came to New York from California. He wanted the Journal to be more exciting than the world. He also wanted it to be cheaper, so he lowered the price to a penny. Hearst attracted attention because his newspaper headings were bigger than anyone else’s. He often says, “Big print makes big news.”

Pulitzer and Hearst did anything they could to sell newspapers. For example, Hearst sent Frederic Remington, the famous illustrator, to draw pictures of the Spanish-American War. When he got there, he told Hearst that no fighting was going on, Hearst answered, “You provide the pictures. I’ll provide the war.”

【推荐3】Have you ever tried living a whole day without cash? With a smart phone, it is easy for ordinary people to do so in most parts of China, even when public transportation is involved. In fact, China’s mobile payment apps are expanding their reaches in the global market as internet giants like Alibaba and Tencent seek to promote their e-payment tools overseas.

While WeChat Pay has been used in twenty countries and regions including Japan and the Republic of Korea, Alipay offers payment choices for shopping, transport and sightseeing in thirty-eight countries and regions. WeChat can deal with transactions (交易) in thirteen currencies, while Alipay supports settlements in twenty-seven currencies. Consumers in altogether twenty-four countries can get their tax refunds through Alipay, and the app is available in more than sixty overseas airports to offer various services. Besides promoting apps overseas, Alibaba’s Ant Financial has partnered with India's Pay TM since 2015 to help the latter build a local mobile payment platform and control risks.

What is certain is that the growth of China's mobile payment is driven by improved internet facilities, technological innovation as well as a friendly business environment. After successes in online shopping, mobile payments expanded into stores and restaurants in and outside China. The trend has made China the world's largest mobile payment market.