On a typical day, off the coast of a small Brazilian island, Joao Pereira de Souza, who was a fisherman, headed out fishing. He was sad to find a lot of oil on the water. Staring at the waves with the oily shine, he decided it was not a good day to fish. But walking along the beach that day, he found a struggling penguin(企鹅), covered with oil and going to die because of hunger.

Pereira took the penguin home, gently cleaned it and spent the next week nursing it back to health. He named it Dindim, a Portuguese word meaning “ice pop”.

Dindim is a Magellanic penguin, a species known for living in the seas of South America. In order to breed(繁殖), he must return to Patagonia, 8,000 kilometers from Pereira’s home. Pereira took Dindim back to the ocean and taught him how to swim again. Soon, it was time for Dindim to return to life in the wild. Pereira watched Dindim swim away, believing it would be the last time to see him.

But the next June, Dindim returned. The two shared a gentle mouth-to-nose greeting (问候), and Dindim stayed for a month, swimming around Pereira’s house. The time to leave arrived, and Pereira thought this surely would be the last time he would see Dindim. But 11 months later, the penguin returned again.

Pereira was unsure whether the returning penguin year after year was the same one. He put a tracking device on Dindim. To his surprise, it was Pereira’s Dindim, returning year after year, for more than a decade.

Pereira and Dindim share a friendship that bridges human life and the natural world.

One day a few years ago a very funny thing happened to a neighbour of mine. He is a teacher at one of London’s big medical schools, He had finished his teaching for the summer term and was at the airport on his way to Russia to give a lecture.

He had put a few clothes and his lecture notes in his shoulder bag, but he had put Rupert, the skeleton (人体骨骼) to be used in his lecture, in a large brown suitcase (箱子). At the airport desk, he suddenly thought that he had forgotten to buy a newspaper. He left his suitcase near the desk and went over to the shop.

When he got back he discovered that someone had taken his suitcase by mistake. He often wonders what they said when they got home and found Rupert.

I am Tony, a volunteer stem cell courier. Since March 2019, I have done 99 trips——of those, 56 have been abroad. I have 42 hours to carry stem cells in my little box because I've got two ice packs and that's how long they last. In all, from the time the stem cells are harvested from a donor to the time they can be implanted (移植) in the patient, we've got 72 hours at most. So I am always conscious of time.

Last year, I had a trip where I was caught by a hurricane in America. I picked up the stem cells in Providence, Rhode Island, and was meant to fly to Washington then back to London. But when I arrived at the check -in desk at Providence, the lady on the desk said: "Well, I'm really sorry, but I've got some bad news for you - there are no flights to Washington." So I took my box and put it on the desk and I said: "In this box are some stem cells that are urgently needed for a patient- please, please, you've got to get me back to the United Kingdom." She just dropped everything. She arranged for a fight on a small plane to be held for me, rerouted (改道) me through Newark and got me back to the UK even earlier than originally scheduled.

For this courier job, I' m consciously aware that in that box I've got something that is potentially going to save someone’s life.