Australia Travel Blog: Melbourne Highlights & Impressions

Melbourne Travel Blog: Part 1

At the MEL Airport

I expected to meet live immigration officers at the Melbourne Airport Tullamarine Airport (MEL). But all the necessary immigration formalities were done by a SmartGates automated machine. I obtained my Australian Electronic Travel Authority or ETA online months before my trip, which is just an electronic visa for Canadians.

At one point when I was walking, a police dog came to my luggage and started sniffing. I stopped and let him sniff, but he lost interest right away and moved onto sniffing someone else.

The whole airport process went so fast and smooth that I thought I missed something. So I asked the standing immigration officer near the exit gate if there was something else. He pointed me to the exit gate and I was relieved.

First Hour in Melbourne

Once I found my relatives at the airport, we headed for the parking lot. The first thing I noticed was that it was not as warm as I was expecting. I was coming from Singapore, so expected hot and humid weather. But it was rather cool and even a light jacket would be appropriate.

If you are a world traveler, you know the feeling the first few hours in a new country. I was trying to notice everything surrounding me to my heart’s content.

Vehicles operate on the left side of the road and drivers sit on the right side, which is opposite than North America. Road and highway signs and markings look noticeably different than Canada as well.

Destination Wyndham Vale

We were heading towards Wyndham Vale, which is a suburb of Melbourne with 25,000 population. It took about 35 to 40 minutes to reach. Wyndham Vale reminded me of suburbs of Toronto like Ajax or Markham.

The first thing I noticed was that average houses are smaller than Canada and tress or plants are different too due to the hot weather. I noticed lots of birds and crows and their chirping was loud.

Melbourne Travel Blog: Part 2

What Is A Recession ?

Definition Of Recession

First Published : May 13, 2009 ADawnJournal.com
Simply put, recession is the opposite of economic growth. A recession can be defined as a decline in the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for more than two consecutive quarters spreading across the country or across the globe.

GDP measures the performance of an economy. You get GDP by adding goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a year.

Signs Of A Recession

You will see the following when a recession occurs:

– Demands for products and services decline
– Goods and products start piling up in the factory, as no one wants to buy  them
– Firms start to lay-off employees, as there is no need for full-scale production due to unsold inventories
– Unemployment starts to rise
– Real income declines
– Business profits and confidence start to plummet
– Investors hold off on investing new money
– Goods and services start to get heavy discounted, as no one is buying anything anymore
– Government start to borrow money
– It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone

What Causes Recession

Recession can be caused by internal and external factors.

Internal or Domestic factors: Higher interest rates can cause a recession, as it discourages consumers from spending and therefore factories shut down, resulting in lay-offs. Examples of other causes include harmful government policies, a sudden increase of food and resource prices, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks.

External Factors: High oil prices, wars, global political instabilities, currency crisis can cause a recession as well.

What Is A Depression

A depression is kind of a recession but on a large scale and has a greater impact. Here are the common characteristics of a depression:

– Lasts longer
– Much larger decline in economic and business activities
– Real GDP usually declines by more than 10 percent
– Causes panic and public fear

The Great Depression, as it is commonly known, was the last depression the United States and many industrialized countries experienced from 1929 to 1938. During that period, the unemployment rate in America reached 25% and the GDP declined by 33%. The world hasn’t seen anything like the Great Depression in the industrialized nations since. Millions of people were unemployed, homeless, and facing starvation.

The Asian Financial Crisis of the 1990s caused depressions in many Asian and non-Asian countries. Indonesia, Thailand, and South Korea were affected the most among many other Asian countries. Non-Asian countries such as Finland and Russia were hit hard as well. Russia’s GDP fell 40% and Finland’s GDP fell 11%.

What to See In Barcelona; The Capital of Catalonia and The Second largest City in Spain

Barcelona Travel Guide

Every one needs a rest before resuming work the next day or during course of the day. Barcelona, a place in Spain has all the answers, it is an area where a solution for fatigue and weariness from work can be found. The scenery of the place and hospitality with in the area leaves every one in an anticipation to visit it. The place is free to visit as long as he/ she comply with their travel rules and regulations.

The courtesy reception given to the visitors make Barcelona a place most conducive for foreigners, on arrival the visitors are provided with guide skits. Therefore a person entering Barcelona for the first time feels at home since travel guidelines are provided. The guidelines provided assist in locating hotels, tourist and museum areas on top of that accessible and safe transportation guaranteeing security to the visitors are commendable.

The beauty of the place is manifested by its attractive recreation centres all over, for instance the nice looking and conducive beaches like Barceloneta beach, Icaria beach, bogatell beach, Mar Bella beach, make Barcelona a unique place where one can have fun to refresh the mind. The influx of people entering Barcelona city is not only the summer holidaymakers, businessmen and academicians but also those in honeymoon. The fun people get when they are around these beaches make them to be always enthusiastic to re-visit them.

The descent hotels in Barcelona are enough to inspire one to pay a visit to the place. Hotels are spacious, luxurious and safe in terms of security and they range from one star to five star hotels hence pleasurable enough for one to spend time there. For instance, Hotel Barcelona Catedral that stands next to the Gothic cathedral has all the amenities a very good hotel should have. For example it has a restraint, bar, fitness room, laundry while swimming pool, gym, bicycle hire and discos available are meant for leisure, to make matters worse rooms are equipped with Satellite TVs, telephone, hair dryers etc. The sensational care that is given in these fantastic hotels brings not only fantasy but a lot of composure and serenity filled with pleasure to guarantee a visitor the most memorable time and this cling on the mind of the visiting persons for years to come.

The tourist attraction areas in Barcelona city create more anxiety to pay it a visit. Museum centres like Picasso museum provide great opportunity to have access to historical archaeologies and other anthropological studies. It is in these museums that great discoveries of the past are stored, therefore people especially academicians and researchers flock and continue to visit this area.

Barcelona a travel site remain one the ostentatious and precious places to visit. The good facilities available like nice hotels, the presence of the recreation centres, the hospitality portrayed through the care given to the visitors like provision of travel guides, hotel guides make a unique and one of the exceptional places to pay a visit. 

How to Make Money from Domain Names

Make Money Online With Domain Names

First Published: AdawnJournal.com December 18, 2008

One thing I like about Internet Entrepreneurship is that you are not limited to only one or a few things. You can make money by doing numberless things, such as blogs, websites, eBooks, affiliate programs, Internet auctions, domain parking, and much more.

What Is a Domain Name?

Today, I am going to discuss how you can make money from domain names. The first thing you may ask is, “What is a domain name?” Let’s look at ADJ’s URL or web address. It is www.adawnjournal.com. Here adawnjournal.com is a domain name of ADJ. A domain name is something that identifies a site, its IP address.

How to Buy a Domain

You can buy a domain through domain registrar companies such as GoDaddy. There are lots of other companies offering domain services, but I use GoDaddy and they are one of the big players in the market. To buy, simply visit a domain registrar and you should able to figure out how to do so. If you are not sure, call their support line or send them an email.

What’s Next?

Once you have purchased your domain, you have many options by which you can use it to make money. I will describe the most important ones here:

·   Do Nothing – You can just hold the domain and do nothing, anticipating that one day your domain will increase in value and someone will buy it for lots of money. You have to be creative in buying if you would like to sell it for a higher price one day. You see, domain names are like Internet real estate and good domains will increase in value in time. For example, Business.com was sold for $7.5 Million and then it was sold again for $350 Million. I do not know who first bought it and at what price, but they almost certainly made a hefty profit.

·   Park Your Domain – If you do nothing and hold your domain, the domain registrar will be making money by creating a default page to direct visitors to your domain. Visitors often type wrong or misspelled domains into their browser and that’s how they end up on these parked domain pages. These pages look like real websites and some confused visitors will click on ads, directories, or search results (which are ads too). Once they click, the domain owner makes money. For example, moneysavingtipsnow.com is a parked domain which I own. So, instead of letting the domain registrar make money with your domains, why don’t you make money for yourself?

·   Or – You can use your domains to promote an affiliate program, sell your own (or someone else’s) products, or create a content rich site to draw traffic to generate income.

There are other ways to make money from domains, but those mentioned above are most used by entrepreneurs.

How to Park

There are many sites offering domain parking services; trafficparking.com, sedo.com, and namedrive.com to name a few. These sites have pages explaining everything you need to know about domain parking.

Final Word

You need to do a lot of research before buying domain names. There are thousands of free tools out there to help with your research. For example, there are tools that will tell you what misspelled names visitors are typing, tools that will tell you domains that are about to expire so you can grab them, tools that will suggest possible domain names to you if you enter keywords, and so many more tools that you can’t possibly imagine. To find these tools, just do a search by entering domain, tools, research, etc.

Something I forgot to mention: how much it does cost to hold a domain? It varies by registrars, but a ballpark figure is about $10 annually. Don’t get confused here, this is not to host a site; the $10 is just to hold the domain under your ownership.

Internet Entrepreneurship needs lots of research, efforts, and time. It does not make you money overnight, but if you can stick to it for the long run, a rewarding life awaits you.

How Spring Cleaning Your House Can Boost Personal Contentment

Rearrange Your House, Rearrange Your Life

The way in which you live your life is governed by so many factors that when you get into a rut it can be hard to know where to look first for improvement. Ordinarily, people tend to make improvements bit by bit, concentrating on improving one area of their life. Sometimes, though, it can be as good a bet to concentrate on something large, something that takes a good deal of effort but will have consequential effects that reach into the rest of your life, and can metaphorically blow away some of the dust in your daily routine while literally blowing away actual dust.

One way of doing this is to literally get your house in order. The human mind is often compared to a dwelling, and this is fitting because many of us spend a lot of time inside both. If you can get your house looking ship-shape and spring cleaned, then the effects can extend into your everyday life and make for a real boost to your personal contentment. Apart from anything, it has been proven time and time again that putting in physical effort releases endorphins and can get you smiling, even if the job itself seems like a gargantuan task to begin with.

It helps to go room by room. If you are somewhat daunted by the prospect of totally rearranging your place of dwelling, then you should start small. Rearranging your bedroom or your kitchen is a process that can take less than half a day and make you feel like you have really accomplished something. If you believe in Feng Shui, it can even be an opportunity to test out some ideas and literally spring clean your life.

As well as the above factors, there is another side benefit – the fact that in spring cleaning rushes you will almost always turn up one or more things that you thought had been lost forever. Some of these things will bring up happy memories, and if the memories they dredge up are less happy it is still an opportunity to do something about it – a small bonfire of the bad parts of the past may be just the thing you need in order to move forward happily and with confidence.

Moving from room to room you will feel as though you are getting a fresh start, another chance to get life rolling again, and you will also almost certainly free up space. We all talk about liking a bit of space in our lives, and although the term is largely metaphorical it can also work literally. If you are sick of weaving your way past things in order to get to your seat, then the difference that is made by opening up floor space can have emotionally beneficial effects as well. When everything is done it can be the ideal excuse to sit back, relax and enjoy some treats that you have promised yourself (possibly as a bribe to encourage you to work). A party may be in order, and one thing is certain – you will sleep like a fairy tale character once it’s all done.

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 July 25, 2009.