Oceania

Travel through Oceania by country:

Australia, Indonesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Travel through Oceania by popular city:

Auckland, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Wellington

Travel through Oceania by popular things to do:

Cook Islands, Sydney Opera House

Travel through Oceania with our writers:

In the Corner of the World, Work and Play in Queensland

How to say “I love you” in different languages

by Iva Skoch on

Happy Valentines day, everyone, wherever in the world you happen to be.

Not that I really care for this holiday, but any day is a good day to learn to say I Love you in Swahili: Nakupenda!

Here is a start of the long list:

1. Arabic Ana Behibak (To A Male)
2. Arabic Ana Behibek (To A Female)
3. Assamese Moi Tomak Bhal Pau
4. Bengali Ami Tomay Bhalo bashi
5. Bolivian Quechua Qanta Munani
6. Bulgarian Obicham Te
7. Burmese Chit Pa De
8. Cambodian Bon Sro Lanh Oon
9. Canadian Sh’teme
10. Catalan T’estim Molt (I Love You A Lot)

Wasps nest inside planes, cause delays

by Iva Skoch on

The airline industry hardly seems to run out of reasons for flights to be delayed or canceled. Here is a really good one from Australia.

A total of five Qantas airline flights were delayed or canceled between January and March 2006 because of “wasp infestation.” Yes, apparently, wasps had built 20-30 nests inside parts of the A330 planes while they were waiting on the runway, according to BBC.

While the plane was taxiing away from the runway, the pilots noticed the brake temperature rose to 685C, causing six of the eight main landing gear tires to deflate. Smoke was coming from the main landing gear area, but nobody was hurt (aside from the wasps).

Qantas and the airport operators have been criticized for responding too slowly to the wasp infestation but a subsequent “enhanced pest eradication program” had now brought the problem under control. Man wins again!

Migration junkies, unite.

by Iva Skoch on

Migration Information Source (migrationinformation.org) was started as a hobby by its an American-born editor, Kirin Kalia, 32, who describes herself to the NY Times as “half Dutch, half Indian, 100 percent American and total migration geek.”

The Source covers a wide range of migration topics: from giving advice to asylum seekers through listing the top migration issues facing the world today to focusing on Tajik construction workers in Russia, Latvian mushrooms pickers in Ireland, farmhands from Burkina Faso who pick Ghanaian crops and the Peruvians who take jobs left behind by Ecuadorean workers who have migrated to Spain.

There are about 200 million migrants in the world (probably a record in both relative and absolute terms) and more than 80 percent live outside the United States. I can’t wait ’til we live in a world where everybody is a migrant. It seems like it would eliminate a lot of issues. Go migrants!

From London to Australia in 5 hours? Way cool.

by Iva Skoch on

A UK company, Reaction Engines, introduced exploratory plans for a hypersonic, eco-friendly passenger jet that would make it possible to fly from the UK to Australia in as little as 5 hours, reports The Guardian today. With funding from the European Space Agency, a team of engineers and scientists has come up with the A2, a plane they believe could carry 300 passengers at a top speed of more than 3,000mph.

Reaction Engines has designed an engine that would run on liquid hydrogen, rather than producing vast amounts of carbon emissions it gives off water vapor and nitrous oxide. Another advantage of the design is that while the 132 meter-long A2 is much bigger than conventional jets it would be lighter than a Boeing 747 and could land on current airport runways. There are some drawbacks, too, such as the possibility of damaging the atmosphere, because the plane would fly at around the height of the ozone layer. Also, it won’t be great for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia, as it does not have any windows.

Who needs windows if surfing in sunny Bondi Beach becomes a day trip, though?

More on global happiness

by Iva Skoch on

Since Eric Weiner’s book, The Geography of Bliss tops all kinds of bestseller lists, the concept of happiness–and the concept of measuring it–seems to be high priority. Why we are so obsessed with happiness is certainly interesting, but even more interesting, I think, is that–contrary to the spiritual teachings out there–money apparently does buy happiness.

As reported by the Holland Herald, using data from the World Database of Happiness, the top 5 happiest countries are also some of the wealthiest countries in the world, despite their lack of sunshine:

  1. Denmark
  2. Switzerland
  3. Austria
  4. Iceland
  5. Finland

On the flip side, the bottom 5 are some of the poorest:

  • Tanzania
  • Zimbabwe
  • Moldova
  • Ukraine
  • Armenia

The interesting part is that most people experience a happiness dip between the ages of 30 and 50. Those are generally not the happiest years in a person’s life. Those are also, paradoxically, the wealthiest years or a person’s life. Hmmm.

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The happiest fliers in the world are the ones riding on the new Singapore Airlines A380:

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