Toronto Pearson International Airport Festival

Toronto Pearson Street Festival

Every year, the Toronto Pearson Street Festival Team arranges a street festival inside the airport airfield where different exhibitors display a wide array of products related (and some non-related) to the aviation industry.

I attended this event this year, which was yesterday June 17, 2017. I had no idea about this event prior to attending and was not sure what to expect and even what sort of crowds to expect. I was surprised to see lots of people attending this gathering.

It was a cloudy day with intermittent sunlight sneaking out through the clouds. The temperature was hovering around 22 C with 70 percent humidity and 30 km/h wind. So it was not that bad to stay in an open airfield enjoying the festival and watching the planes that were landing and taking off right next to us on active runways.

There were many stalls or demonstrations, but those I liked most were a very friendly K9 police officer doc, a demonstration of chemical and biological weapon gear, a FedEx C-FEXH Cessna single-engine turboprop aircraft, and another gigantic FedEx cargo airplane, and some other airport equipment and fire trucks.

I do have videos of all those I liked and will post them on my YouTube Channel one by one. You will find one link inside this post as well, but visit my channel for all other videos I made from the Toronto Pearson Street Festival.

In the future, I will try to show more behind the scenes at the airport, as the Toronto Pearson International Airport offers programs where visitors can take an inside look at some of the airport maintenance and equipment facilities. If you have not subscribed to my YouTube Channel, go ahead and do so and I will see you soon.

How to Apply for Indian Tourist Visa

India Tourist Visa from Canada

For my upcoming trip to Asia in November, I just finished going through the process of applying for an Indian tourist visa. And I decided to write about it to give those who will be visiting India in the future some ideas. I will only mention my own experience obtaining a regular tourist visa.

There are other types of tourist visas (such as e-Visa, medical visa, etc.) and/or different procedures for obtaining them, which I am not talking about here. This process is applicable in Canada and possibly very similar to other European countries or the USA. The process and links mentioned below to obtain a visa from the country you are reading from could be very different. For that matter, the process in Canada may have totally changed by the time you are reading this. So check the Consulate General of India website first before starting your application.

To break it down to its simplest terms, here are the steps you need to go through to obtain an Indian tourist visa:

1. Except for a handful countries, citizens of most other countries require a visa before arriving in India. See the BLS link for those countries whose citizens can be issued a visa upon arrival. Link 1: http://www.blsindia-canada.com/touristvisa.php

2. You need to fill out and submit an online visa application and get a printout. Link 2: https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/index.html Obtain other documents, such as an appropriate picture, passport, fees, and anything else mentioned under the Requirements tab on the Link 1 website.

3. BLS International, an outsourcing company, looks after India visa processing, and you need to submit everything required to BLS Centres assigned to your area. You can find your BLS Centre by visiting the Contact section under Link 1. If you have any questions, call BLS to clarify before going there.

4. Once you submit, your passport with visa will be mailed out to you or you can pick it up at BLS once available.

There is the option to mail out everything to BLS instead of physically going there, but I do not recommend this because everything will be delayed if they found any mistakes on your application. The benefits of physically submitting an online printout at BLS is that if there are any errors, BLS will tell you right away and you can correct it by submitting another online application on the same day if time permits.

My application was declined the first time, as I put Canada as place of issue instead of Gatineau. I had one hour left before the cut-off time for that day. I rushed to a computer store next door to resubmit online with a new printout (once you apply online it cannot be modified if there was a mistake and you need to redo the whole thing again) and was still able to make it.

The full process is not that difficult. However, with a Canadian passport I am not used to getting a visa because I can travel most places without a visa. For those few countries where a visa is required, I feel slightly weird about going through the process of obtaining it. I have a video on this as well for which I will provide a link on the top left of this article.

Invest Now Wins Prestigious Awards

Invest Now Wins Prestigious Editor's Choice Award

I am excited to let all my readers know that Invest Now has been rewarded prestigious Editor’s Choice award by its publisher iUniverse. This special award makes Invest Now eligible to receive highly prestigious Publisher’s Choice award. What does all these mean? If selected for Publisher’s Choice award, Invest Now will be featured in the high-traffic area at the front of a Chapters, Indigo or Coles store for at least 60 days. Then, if Invest Now generates steady demand, Chapters, Indigo or Coles store will continue stocking Invest Now in that location and will be placed in additional locations.

Invest Now is going through Cover Concept Evaluation at the publisher and expected to be published in early 2008.

First Published: Oct 31, 2007 ADawnJournal.com

Invest Now Wins Highly Prestigious Publisher's Choice Award

I am excited to let all my readers know that Invest Now has been rewarded highly prestigious Publisher's Choice award by its publisher iUniverse. Invest Now will be featured in the high-traffic area at the front of a Chapters, Indigo or Coles store for at least 60 days. Then, if Invest Now generates steady demand, Chapters, Indigo or Coles store will continue stocking Invest Now in that location and will be placed in additional locations.

Invest Now is going through the production stage at the publisher and expected to be published in early 2008.

About Publisher’s Choice

The iUniverse Publisher’s Choice designation identifies, supports, and celebrates those new titles that display potential for greater commercial success. Publisher’s Choice rewards iUniverse titles that exhibit both editorial integrity and outstanding design quality. During the publishing process, these titles undergo a stringent editorial review and a design evaluation. Deserving titles are awarded Publisher’s Choice and, as a result, become eligible to be displayed on the New Paperback Releases table in the author’s local Chapters, Indigo or Coles store for a minimum of eight weeks.

First Published: Dec 21, 2007 ADawnJournal.com

Entrepreneurs Don't Need To Do It Alone

Two Heads Are Better Than One

There is often an impression that the world of entrepreneurship is somewhat hyper-competitive, with many people under the impression that if you can’t do it all on your own than you might as well forget it. There is a fairly negative impression of sharing, of accepting or looking for help, and once the game is over and the money is counted, the people with the most smug smiles on their face are the ones who are able to say they did it all on their own. Some credit has to go to these people, undoubtedly, because they have done a fine job to get so far without any input from someone else. But would it be such a bad thing to enlist help on occasion? Sometimes a partnership is, after all, more than the sum of its parts.

Whatever you call it – outsourcing, joint venture, partnership or anything else – there are times when doing it all on your own becomes counter-productive. Maybe it is true that no-one knows your business better than you do, but sometimes you will need to look beyond the world in which you are comfortable and allow someone else to take a look at things. Working together with them in an official capacity could be the smartest decision you make – and the best for you. Some people avoid joint partnerships because they feel that they will have to share more than they would like. But what if a half-share in something big is better than a hundred per cent of something smaller? It does not have to be about doing it all on your own. Sometimes the partnership is the soundest business decision and the best for your bottom line.

It is best to accept early on in your business career that you are not going to be a master of all trades, because no-one is. There are gaps in everyone’s knowledge, holes in everyone’s experience. This is not an admission of weakness. It is strategic realism. If you accept that you are not an expert on everything, and enlist someone who is an expert in a field that can help you, you will benefit from their expertise and you will see better results for it. Indeed through working with someone else you can find yourself absorbing knowledge that could help you in many other ways somewhere down the line.

It may be that someone else speaks another language which will help with an overseas market, or that someone has an innate knowledge of a specific way of doing a job – something that your customers have requested several times in the past. The other person may have an ingrained knowledge of the geography of an area you want to crack, but whatever it is, the important thing for you as an entrepreneur is that it can aid you in your dealings and take you up a level. Spurning the chance to work with someone else, someone with experience and intelligence, is simply cutting off your nose to spite your face.

First Published: Sep 6, 2009 EntrepreneurJourney.com

Is CIBC Providing Free Credit Score?

CIBC Offers Free Credit Score Via Its App

Just about a year ago, Canadians had to pay $24-$25 if they wanted to access their credit score. However, the landscape of free credit score changed when FinTech loan companies like Borrowell.com, Mogo.ca, and Creditkarma.ca started offering free credit score.

Now, better yet, CIBC customers who have the CIBC mobile banking app on their phone will be able to access their free credit score without even signing up with any one of these three providers I mentioned.

CIBC’s free score is a result of partnership between CIBC and Borrowell and pulls Equifax credit score, which is a proprietary model of Equifax. Keep in mind that this is different than FICO credit score, which is a proprietary model of Fair Isaac Corporation. This credit score is a soft credit inquiry that does not negatively affect credit score.

Besides providing free credit scores, the mobile app has a FAQ section where clients can learn about how credit score works and so on. This is a good thing. Some recent research performed by CIBC shows that 69 percent of Canadians have do not know their credit scores and 45 percent have no idea where or how to obtain their credit score.

I have published a video review of CIBC’s providing free credit score and I also have showed how to access your free credit score on your app. Click on the above link to watch this video and you can follow step-by-step instructions to access your own credit score right away. You do have to have a CIBC account and mobile app to check your free credit score.