Cultural Travel Tips

Literary Holidays

To go on holiday is quite enough for many people. Once you get to that mid-point in the year, having been working flat out for some months, it is more than enough to get away from it all and spend some time by a swimming pool. Others, however, will enjoy the chance to go and do something that they have not had the opportunity to do for some time. Cultural trips are something that can be considered a niche market – you either enjoy it or you do not. They are, however, growing more popular than ever, and holiday makers will look to the books on their shelves before the brochures at the travel agency when it comes to planning a holiday.

The world does not view literature as something that as borders. There are great writers from many countries, and their influences, muses and their childhood haunts are greatly varied. Whoever your favourite writer is, there is a tour to be made in their honour. Their original writings may not even have been in English – some of the finest writers in the world are only available through the wonders of translation. This makes it all the better to take a little literary tour in their honour – you can enjoy the wonders of another country while witnessing what influenced your heroes. If it so happens that your favourite writer grew up 25 kilometres away from where you live, then you can at least make a cheap day trip out of the experience.

For the Canadian bibliophile, it is possible to travel and see the old haunts of arguably Canada’s greatest living fiction author Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale among other books. A varied childhood took Margaret from her birthplace in Ottawa to the wilder areas of Northern Quebec and back again, before heading on to Sault Sainte Marie and Toronto, where she read English. She has taught in many universities in Canada and beyond as a professor of English. For any budding writer, to see the sights that sparked such creativity into life can surely never be a bad thing.

For those who wish to spread their wings a little more, there are options just beyond the borders of Canada – some people will invariably wish to follow in the footsteps of the great travelogue authors like Jack Kerouac or Hunter S Thompson. Others will be keen to see the sights that influenced the likes of F Scott Fitzgerald, James Ellroy and Edgar Allen Poe, to whose work Baltimore has become an almost permanent monument.

Further south, in the Hispanic area of Central and South America there are many reminders of the great work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende and Carlos Fuentes. Elsewhere in the world there have been amazing writers in so many nations – Ireland has Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats, England has William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer and very many others. France and Spain have had wonders which need no introduction, and the Africa of Senghor and Fanon among others will capture the imagination of any lover of great literature.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Travelnowsimply.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to ahmeddawn.com site. This article originally published on the above website on June 26, 2009.

Want to Be Ultra-Rich Fast? Move to Bangladesh

How to Get Rich Fast

I was expecting a comparatively quiet cabin when I boarded my Business Class Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Dhaka in November 2017. But to my surprise it was all full. What I did not understand then, I understand now after global ultra-rich research firm Wealth-X published their World Ultra Wealth Report 2018 report.

Contrary to popular belief, China is not the country producing ultra-high net worth (UHNW) population (those with $30+ million net worth) most. Bangladesh is the global leader and the fastest growing country in the world making people ultra-rich.

Here are the top 10 countries (growth rate) producing an ultra-rich population in the last 6 years (2012-2017):

Bangladesh (17.3%)

Chine (13.4%)

Vietnam (12.7%)

Kenya (11.7%)

India (10.7%)

Hong Kong (9.3%)

Ireland (9.1%)

Israel (8.6%)

Pakistan (8.4%)

United States (8.1%)

Courtesy: Wealth-X report

The ultra-high net worth (UHNW) population in Bangladesh posted a staggering 17.3% growth. The global UHNW number increased 12.9%. So China is not the global leader creating ultra-rich, that title goes to Bangladesh.

The top-ten list is different in terms of where the richest 595 UHNW population live:

US (79,595)

Japan (17,915)

China (16,875)

Germany (15,080)

Canada (10,840)

France (10,120)

Hong Kong (10,010)

United Kingdom (9,370)

Switzerland (6,400)

Italy (5,960)

Courtesy: Wealth-X report

So if you want to get rich fast, pack your bag and head to Bangladesh, which has been ranked as the fastest growing country in the world to become rich.

Why China Will Dominate the 21st Century

China and The 21st Century

Published Date : April 17, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

The 19th century was the British Century, when the British Empire dominated the planet. The 20th century was the American Century, when the United States and its culture dominated the planet. At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, what country will dominate? What country will feel its reach extended and what country will have its culture reach every region of the planet?

Well, while many want to think that it will be the United States; most experts feel that while the United States will remain very important, the true dominator of the 21st century will be China.

In a poll done by The Washington Post and ABC News in February of 2010, 53 percent of respondents felt that the United States’ role in the 21st century will be smaller than it was in the 20th century. In addition, 43 percent feel that the country to dominate the 21st century will be China.

One reason for this is the incredibly rapid growth of the nation. In 1980, 53 percent of the Chinese population lived in poverty. In 2010, just 30 years later, only eight percent of the population is in poverty thanks to the rapidly increasing size of the Chinese middle class. The economy of China has also been growing, quite quickly, at a world-dominating 8.7 percent per year. This is well above what the United States economy is growing at. As well, the United States owes China more money than China owes the United States. The massive amount of consumerism in the United States has greatly helped China, where a vast amount of American products are actually made.

Factories are being built at a blistering pace in China, and the country is also investing heavily in green energy. All of this is making it appear that China is going to be the country to watch during the 21st century.

Of course, China is not exempt from problems. The country still has a lot of work to do in order to reach the same level as the United States in other regards. These include:

1.   China needs to create more political freedoms for its citizens.

2.   China needs to ensure that it has higher standards for the types of products it uses and the materials it uses in the products, like lead.

3.   China needs to cut back on its coal power use to keep the country from becoming heavily polluted.

4.   China needs to take a more diplomatic approach with other countries, especially concerning Taiwan and Tibet.

In the meantime, China is working hard to be a force to be reckoned with. While it may seem like China is just emerging as a giant in the 21st century, it is also important to remember that the country has actually been a force for 5,000 years. In fact, China has created many of the inventions the Western World uses, but they did so centuries before Europe. China is always a force to be reckoned with.

Putting It On Paper Can Solve Your Problems

Make a List, Prioritize  Your Life

 If you are dissatisfied with your lot in life, it can seem like a fairly daunting prospect to just decide that you are not going to stand for it anymore and make a change for the better. Where do you even start? It can seem like the hardest part of all is just to make sense of everything. Few of us are lucky enough to have just one problem, which if it is fixed will iron everything out and give us a simple life. One problem seems to lead to another one, two matters that are interconnected can each seem to complicate solving the other, and unravelling them can be so daunting that people give up on ever changing anything and just resolve to make the best of their lot in life. This is however not the best option to take. Unless you attack problems at the source, they will continue to make life difficult.

Approaching a personal development plan is daunting, yes. But when you sit and think about it, how wonderful would it be to be able to say that you are tackling your problems head on? There is a cliché that says that getting started is half the battle won. The reason this has become a cliché is because there is more than a morsel of truth in it. If you want to tackle your problems head on, then the best first step to take is making a list. What is it that you want to improve about your life? Do you want to give up a bad habit that is dragging you down? Is it a personal relationship issue? Is it a financial worry? These are just three sides to the issue of personal development, and there are certainly several other categories into which problems can fall. Your instincts will tell you which ones are your key issues.

When you put something down on paper, it makes it easier to isolate what exactly the crux of the problem is. Don’t limit it to a few words, write down everything that the problem makes you think and feel. Then isolate the key words in what you have written. Think about how you can address these problems. Evaluate different solutions and look at how each one will affect you. This will help you identify where you might end up swapping one problem for another, and allow you to take the solutions on their merits.

It may make for a harrowing experience, seeing your problems written down on paper. But both symbolically and psychologically it can make a real difference. The problems are no longer only on your mind, they are down on paper, and what you have in front of you is a battle plan, or game plan. You cannot defeat an enemy that you cannot see, but once you can see it, it becomes solid. And nothing that is solid is invulnerable. It makes a big difference to be able to see where you can attack a problem and once you do it, you will feel a whole lot better. It would be simplistic to say it will be easy sailing from there, but you will at least have steadied the ship.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on Mar 30, 2009.

Why Choose Bamboo For Your Home?

Choosing Bamboo in Your Home

The earth provides us with absolutely everything that we need in order to survive without damaging the planet. The problem is that we usually choose alternatives that hurt the planet. Two of the most common resources we use are cotton and timber. These two items are important to our civilization because they clothe us and provide us with housing. However, they also hurt the planet in that large areas must be cleared for cotton, and the pesticide use on cotton damages the environment. As well, cutting down timber takes away important animal habitats, and hurts the earth’s ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

In Asia, there is no cotton and timber is not used as extensively as it is here, so what do they use? They use bamboo and bamboo is something that the Earth provides for us that we can use without damaging the environment. Here are just some of the amazing facts about this wonder-plant.

1.   Bamboo grows at one foot per day, making it the fastest growing plant on Earth. While many think of bamboo as a tree, it is actually the world’s largest grass species.

2.   Bamboo can be harvested in only three years, versus ten years for many tree species.

3.   When bamboo is harvested, the bamboo stalk will keep growing, allowing one stalk to be harvested multiple times. Timber is a one-shot deal, once harvested, that is it for that tree.

4.   Bamboo is used to reinforce concrete in Asia, as well as the primary element of scaffolding in many Asian countries.

5.   Bamboo has the same tensile strength as steel when it is in stalk form.

6.   When converted into fabric, bamboo is as soft as silk. However, it is also hypoallergenic, which makes it perfect for baby clothes.

7.   No pesticides need to be used to grow bamboo because of its amazing growth rate.

8.   Bamboo towels are 1/3 as thick as cotton towels, but it can absorb 1.5 times as much water.

9.   Bamboo can also be used in your home to make:

1.   Counters

2.   Floors

3.   Furniture

4.   Cupboards

5.   Walls

This just shows what an amazing plant bamboo is. For thousands of years, it has been used in Asia for everything from homes to food, and it is a distinctive part of their culture these days. The Western World is beginning to catch on to the power of this plant, and many countries are not only beginning to import bamboo, but they are also growing it themselves. While China supplies about 80 percent of the bamboo in the world, places like Europe, the United States, Australia and even Canada are beginning to start growing their own bamboo. Given everything listed here, it is really no surprise that many experts feel that bamboo is going to be the most important plant resource of the 21st century. Where timber was important for the 19th and 20th centuries, bamboo is the plant of the new millennium.

Bamboo is highly environmentally-friendly, and the perfect alternative to using timber and cotton in our changing world.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to AhmedDawn.com. This article originally published on the above website on Mar 13, 2010.