Top Cities in The World

Mercer’s 2014 Top Highest Living Quality Cities in The World

First Published Date: March 9, 2014 ADawnJournal.com

International consulting company Mercer recently published its 2014 best cities in the world ranking and like any other rankings of this type, Canadian cities dominate the list. Let’s look at the world’s top best five cities for quality for life.

1. Vienna – Austria

2. Zurich – Switzerland

3. Auckland – New Zealand

4. Munich – Germany

5. Vancouver – Canada

Here are some highlights from the report:

– Vienna is the highest ranking and Baghdad is the lowest ranking city on earth.

– Vancouver is the top North American city.

– Singapore is the top Asian city.

– Dubai is the top Middle East and African city.

– Top five North American cities are Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and San Francisco.

– Bottom five North American cities are Mexico City, Detroit, St. Louis, Houston, and Miami.

– Political instability, crime rates, air pollution are some of the factors determining rankings.

Mercer publishes its Quality of Living Raking to help multinational corporations evaluate and compare the standard of living between their own countries and host foreign countries. View the full report here: Quality of Living City Rankings

New Aeroplan Program Highlights | What You Need to Know

Everything You Need to Know About Air Canada’s Refreshed Aeroplan

Air Canada Aeroplan starts a new airline loyalty flight on November 8, 2020 with a redesign of their Aeroplan program. Today, I will give you a brief summary of what’s important.

For detailed information, visit the Aeroplan Website. Also, you can watch my video on Aeroplan here:

New Aeroplan (Air Canada) | What You Must Know Now

Aeroplan New Earn Structures and Longer Expiration

The earning structures are changing from being based on miles flown to amounts spent. Points expiration will stretch from 12 months to 18 months. Also, there will be options to recover your points without a hefty penalty.

Those Hated Fuel/Carrier Surcharges Are Gone

The new Aeroplan will have no more fuel surcharges. Those ridiculous, pesky surcharges or fuel fees or carrier fees/surcharges will be eliminated. Instead, there will be a flat $39 Cad fee to book partner flights.

Every Seat Is A Reward Seat

A major complaint with the Aeroplan program was that there were no reward seats available. This will change. No more seat restrictions or blackouts. If you can buy a ticket, you will be able to book it with Aeroplan points under their new program. Canada seats will be available based on market value. There will be options to pay using points + cash or points only. Partners' seats will be based on fixed points.

There will be 4 travel zones: North America, South America, Atlantic, and Pacific.

There will be a variety of ways to use points such as to upgrade to business class, purchase Wi-Fi, pay baggage fees, enter elite lounges, etc.

Points Sharing

You will have the ability to pool points together to earn or redeem. Up to 8 members allowed. This is a good feature for families.

Stopovers + Open-Jaws

You will be able to add 5000 points to get a 2nd destination on a one-way trip. You can add Open-Jaws for free on a round-trip. I explained what an Open-Jaw is in the video.

Alexandria Day Trip – Part 9 | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 1 (Part 14)

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Koshari (Kushari) Street Food | Alexandria Street Food

After finishing our Alexandria tour, we were heading down to our hotel in Giza. We were all hungry and the tour guide gave us options to go to a restaurant, which would kill another 45 minutes, or grab some street food on our way and keep driving.

Everyone chose to try street food without wasting time and there were a few Egyptian foods to choose from. Our tour guide recommended Koshari, also known as Egypt’s national food, and everyone seemed to agree.

This is a very popular food in Egypt. Wherever Egyptians go, they will eat Koshari. Guests are visiting? They will be offered Koshari. Every week Egyptians will eat Koshari at least 3-4 times.

Koshari is made of rice, macaroni or spaghetti or paste, lentils, chickpeas, spicy tomato sauce, beans, and vinegar sauce. Depending on where in Egypt you buy it from, there can be variations in ingredients, but it’s always got the same great taste.

I liked Koshari right away, but it was spicy. It’s a vegetarian dish, but so delicious that you won’t miss the meat. The one I ate had pasta in it. It felt like I was eating pasta, or chickpeas, or something else.

Koshari is savory, has satisfying depth and texture, and is out-of-this-world tasty. The taste was incredible and the memory of eating it while we were driving through rural Egypt was unforgettable.

Next day I will start the actual Egypt tour, starting with the Pyramids.

Lights Off for Earth Hour

Earth Hour 2009

Published Date: March 28, 2009

This Saturday (28th March) marks an effort to raise awareness of the need to take action on climate change. For a global problem, the initiative needs to be global, and so it is proving with Earth Hour – a worldwide initiative which recommends that every business and household switch off its lights and non-essential electrical appliances between the hours of 8:30 and 9:30 pm. By doing this, it is hoped that the amount of energy wasted will come down not only on Saturday night but, given the awareness raised by Earth Hour, people will take the decision to keep all non-essential appliances off when they are not in use. Earth Hour 2009 is the second annual worldwide celebration, but the movement has been in place since 2005.

Originally celebrated in Thailand in 2005, Earth Hour arose again in Australia in 2007, with lights going out across Sydney at 7:30pm. Last year was the first time that it officially became an international movement however, with thirty-five countries getting involved on a governmental level, and in all 400 cities taking part. Monuments such as the Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House, Bangkok’s Wat Arun Temple and the CN Tower all switched off non-essential lighting for the day. This year, the number of countries and cities participating has gone up by a huge amount, with 82 countries involved and more than 2100 cities. With the United Nations Climate Change Conference due to take place in December, organizers are hoping that the event has as great a level of success as possible.

Although it has had its critics, Earth Hour is viewed by and large as a major method of raising awareness. The amount of energy saved on the evening will, it is true, be dwarfed by the amount used during the rest of the day, and there are many who view the event of tokenism. The environmentalist response to this must be to point out that if one must consider it to be symbolism, it will at the very least be symbolic of differences we can all make in our own energy consumption, and in the use of energy in general. With so man y countries and cities already taking part in the campaign, the importance of as high a level of compliance as possible to demonstrate to national governments the public desire for action on climate change is essential.

100+ cities in Canada are signed up to the event – a sign of national feeling on the issue – and when you realize that the idea at the outset of this year for the organizers was to get 1000 in total worldwide, the fact that this has been more than doubled is something quite astonishing to behold. For the first time, there will be participation from Africa, with Kenya and South Africa both signed up. India and China – each of which has a population of over one billion people, have also agreed to participate. This is a real measure of what people power can achieve.

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 A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on March 28, 2009.

The World’s Top Richest People

World’s Top Ten Billionaires 2014

First Published: March 2014 ADawnJournal.com

Forbes magazine recently published its annual ranking of global billionaires. Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates is on the top spot, pushing down Carlos Slim, who was on the top last year. Here are the top ten global billionaires for 2014:

The Top 10 billionaires

Bill Gates ($76B)

Carlos Slim Helú ($72B)

Amancio Ortega ($64)

Warren Buffett ($58.2B)

Larry Ellison ($48B)

Charles/David Koch ($40B each)

Sheldon Adelson ($38B)

Christy Walton ($36.7B)

Jim Walton ($34.7B)

Liliane Bettencourt ($34.5)

Source: Forbes.com

Here are some highlights from the ranking:

– There were a record number of 1,645 total billionaires.

– Bill Gates ranked #1 in 15 of the last 20 years.

– Due to Facebook’s recent $19B accension of WhatsApp, its founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum became 551th and 202th on the list.

– The US continues to dominate the list (492 billionaires), then Europe (468) and Asia (444). Country-wise, China (152) and Russia (111) have the most billionaires after USA.

– Some new countries were added for the first time: Algeria, Lithuania, Tanzania, and Uganda.

– More than 30 Canadians made it to the list.

– About 1000 people dropped off the list and 16 passed away.

– 1080 billionaires were self-made, 207 were inherited, and 352 were partly inherited.

– A record number of 172 women billionaires (up 25 percent from last year) made it to the list. Total new 268 billionaires were added to the list.