New Zealand Travel Blog: Auckland Highlights & Impressions

Auckland Travel Blog: Part 1

At the AKL Airport

Just like my experience in Melbourne, I didn’t have to face any human immigration officers at the airport. The automated machines process immigration for select visa-free countries called eGate and I was able to pass through immigration without any issue. Traveling with only one carry-on also helped.

SkyBus to Downtown Auckland

The most affordable way to reach downtown from the Auckland Airport is to take the SkyBus. You can purchase tickets ahead of your trip online or at the airport. The ticket booth is located right at the bus pickup spot at the international terminals in the Auckland Airport. Look for the SkyBus pickup spot and ticket booth near Door 8 at the international terminals.

The was a young female employee who greeted me at the bus spot and she showed me where to wait and mentioned the next bus would arrive in 10 minutes. I was the first one there waiting for that bus, but later on more customers were coming in.

If you buy a ticket ahead of time, you get discounts. I paid only NZD $17.50 on the SkyBus website; you will find tools there to figure where you need to get off based on your address. My destination was the President Hotel at 35 Victoria Street West, Auckland downtown. So I needed to get off at 175 Queen St Stop 7051.

The bus operator was extremely friendly and once I told him where I needed to get off, he made sure I got off at the right spot and explained to me that I still had to walk a couple of blocks to the hotel. He was my first hands-on experience on how nice and helpful New Zealanders are.

How to have a Positive Attitude in Your Life

Having a Positive Attitude in Your Life

One of the most important things you can do for yourself is to have a positive attitude in your life. With a positive attitude, you will find your life completely changes based on the fact that you are seeing things in a brighter and happier way. It is vitally important for any amount of personal development that you have a positive attitude as well. If you do not have a positive attitude, you will doubt your ability to improve upon yourself, and that is a nail in the coffin of personal development. As well, have a positive attitude can help you reduce your stress and a reduction in stress is important for your health. So, how can you have a positive attitude in your life to aid your personal development? Follow these easy steps to make it happen.

1. Start being passionate about the things in your life. Get right into things and follow the philosophy of Carpe Diem, which is Latin for Seize the Day. With this attitude, you will enjoy life more and you will work to continually improve upon yourself as a result.

2. Be grateful for what you have. Your philosophy towards personal development should be one of being grateful for what you have, and to always achieve more with your life.

3. Whenever an opportunity presents itself, seize it. One of the worst things in terms of personal development is regret. Even if the opportunity does not work out, you will have taken the risk to make it happen. When it succeeds, you will find new confidence in yourself and that allows you to make even more personal development decisions.

4. Instead of reacting to situations, act on situations. If you wait for something bad to happen, it probably will and this is why you have to make good things happen by being proactive with situations.

5. Keep laughing and always try to have a good sense of humor about situations. When you find humor in situations that most people would not, you will find it is easier to conquer challenges and easier to make a bad situation turn good. With a good sense of humor, you can have a positive attitude and that will help your personal development.

6. You are in charge of your life and you need to remember that when you are going through personal development changes. You are in charge and no one can tell you what is good or bad for your life. Yes, you can listen to the advice of others, but you should always ensure you make a decision based on what you want, rather than what they want.

Personal development is something that is important if you want to change your life, but to change your life you need to have the right attitude. The right attitude is highly important because you need to trust your decisions and to know that you can make the changes in your life that you want. Depression is something that can hinder personal development, and having a positive attitude keeps depression at bay. In the end, you will be happy you had a positive attitude, and your life will have changed forever.

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. This article originally published on the above website on Mar 13, 2010

How To Get Free Marriage Counseling

How To Get Free Relationship Therapy

First Published: February 25, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

Therapy can be very expensive. If your budget allows it, don’t think too much about these fees and spending a lot of money. This is not an expense; think of this as an investment towards your future. If your budget does not allow it, paying for therapy can be really challenging. However, there are ways you can find therapy for free or for cheap.

1. Try group therapy – If you don’t mind sharing your differences with others. Group therapy can cost $25 per hour, while typical individual therapy can run from $100 to $200 per hour. To find group therapy in your area, search for group therapy your area on line.

2. Sliding Scale – Ask your therapists if they can change according to income. This option is called sliding scale. Many therapists offer this nowadays. Don’t be afraid or shy to ask.

3. Government Programs – There are many free government programs available to help with counseling. Call your social services office and they will be able to find you an appropriate agency.

4. Employee Assistance Programs – If you are employed, most likely you have these programs through your work. These are confidential, free, and good quality therapy programs. There may be some restrictions. Check with your HR.

5. Charities and Religious Organizations – Many charities and religious groups (churches, synagogues, mosques etc) offer free or low-cost therapy services. Some of these organizations have their own therapists and some of them can help you find free or low-cost therapists according to your needs. Don’t be afraid to check with different faith than yours institutions. It’s unlikely that they will refuse you to serve because you are from a different religion.

6. Friends and Family – Another option would be to talk to someone you highly regard as a well-knowledgeable person on this marriage/relationship/family issues. This person can be your friend, an elderly member of your family, or someone in your neighbourhood. Although this person may not be able to provide professional counseling like a licensed therapist, it is good talk to someone rather than no one at all.

7. Try This – If you are not able to follow any one the five tips I mentioned above, doing the following should get you a free therapist.
Search online by entering these keyword phrases:
A. Free marriage Counseling Resources in Toronto
B. Toronto free marriage therapy community services

NB – Replace Toronto with your own city name.

World's Top Travel Destinations

TripAdvisor's 2015 Top Destinations

First Published in 2015 TravelNowSimply.com

The world's largest travel site, TripAdvisor, just came up with their annual rankings for the world's best travel destinations for 2015, called the Traveller's Choice Award. There were 469 destinations chosen worldwide based on feedback received from TripAdvisor travellers.

These destinations are historically and culturally rich and offer excellent sightseeing opportunities with quality hotels and restaurants – based on TripAdvisor reviews that stretch over a period of 12 months.

Here are the top 10 destinations in the world:

1. Marrakech, Morocco

2. Siem Reap, Cambodia

3. Istanbul, Turkey

4. Hanoi, Vietnam

5. Prague, Czech Republic

6. London, England

7. Rome, Italy

8. Buenos Aires, Argentina

9. Paris, France

10. Cape Town, South Africa

Source: TripAdvisor

Here are the top 10 destination in Asia:

1. Siem Reap, Cambodia

2. Hanoi, Vietnam

3. Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

4. Bangkok, Thailand

5. Kathmandu, Nepal

6. Hong Kong, China

7. Hoi An, Vietnam

8. Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia

9. Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia

10. Beijing, China

Source: TripAdvisor

Among Asian destinations, Siem Reap in Cambodia takes the first spot, which is also ranked as the #2 top destination in the world. About half of the top Asian destinations are located in Southeast Asia. To view the complete list, visit TripAdvisor's 2015 Traveler's Choice Ranking.

Dot Com Lifestyle

Dot Com Lifestyle Journey Continues

First Published: ADawnJournal.com Published Date : March 1, 2009

Today, I will update you on a few things on my persuasion to live a Dot Com Lifestyle. The following paragraphs may not be related to each other.

Dot Com Lifestyle
A Dawn Journal has been on Google’s number one search results match for “Dot Come Lifestyle” for a while. Right now, it is no longer the number one match, but it’s still staying on the first page as the 3rd or 4th match. Hopefully, it will get back to the top position again shortly. For the “Canada personal finance” key phrase search, ADJ has been in the number one position for awhile.

Internet Entrepreneurship
As an Internet entrepreneur, I run many websites and own a handful of domains. A lot of these websites do not bear my name and as such visitors will not be able to tell who owns these sites when they browse. However, I will always tell you about those sites which have my name stamped on it, such as Canada Personal Finance Blog or Canada Personal Finance Website. I have decided to launch two new websites under my name.

These sites are:
The Green Living Blog – www.thegreenlivingblog.com
Simple Personal Development – www.simplepersonaldevelopment.com

Although these sites are now live, the site design has not been fully completed yet. I will write a post and issue a press release to let you know once they are 100% complete.

ADJ Is Making More Money Gradually
ADJ’s overall monthly income is going up gradually. In its first year ADJ made almost no money, but now I am seeing an increase in income slowly. Internet Entrepreneurship does not make you money overnight. You have to put in lot of research, effort, time, and hard work to become successful.

Trying New Ads
You may have noticed a new eBay ad displaying on ADJ on the right panel. I am trying this new ad to see what kind of money it makes. Also, I have replaced Kontera (www.kontera.com) In-text ad with Infolinks (www.infolinks.com). Since I have done this, my In-text revenue is up five-fold.

eBay and Amazon
What I like about eBay is that they have sophisticated Geo-Targeting technology. For instance, if a visitor from Australia clicks on it, it will take him to eBay Australia; if a visitor clicks from Canada, it will take her to eBay Canada. In this way, I am not missing global visitors. Amazon does not have this technology – I use Amazon Canada for my Canadian sites and Amazon USA for all other sites. This is quite a headache, as I need to create and maintain ads from more than one Amazon account.

I spoke with my programmer regarding Amazon’s Geo-targeting incapability. He mentioned that he might be able to write a PHP Script that would detect visitors’ country and show the appropriate Amazon ad based on its location.  If this can be done, it will save me a lot of time and hassle.

That’s all for today. I will keep you updated on my Internet Entrepreneurship and there will be more posts on this shortly.