First of all I would like to give you a little background information on the Open Circle Fighting Method and its amazing head coach Russell Stutely.

Russell first started Karate at the age of nine when his elder brother took him to a class where they where taught Shukokai Karate. Russell took to this like a duck to water and was soon advancing through the belts. Through no fault of his own after a while he was unable to carry on due to family problems. He never forgot or stopped training on his own and when it was possible to restart with a club the only one available was a style called Shotokan.

He quickly adapted to the changes and carried on advancing through the grades eventually attaining black belt fifth dan status. A few years before this he had started training with other styles and had already got a reputation as an exponent in pressure points. In fact he had spent many thousands of pounds travelling abroad to train with experts like Rick Moneymaker of the Dragon society. Plus he hosted in the UK many tours and seminars for these experts. So his personal knowledge soared and he put all of this together with the skills he already had.

Alongside some other training partners Russell started to put into action the ideas he had formed. To create a new system from scratch incorporating anything that would work in a real life situation. This was far from easy and involved many years of hard work and study. The Open Circle Fighting Method was born this is still very much a work in progress. As Russell likes to say we are all students at heart there is always something new to learn.

I know Russell would be annoyed with me if I was to let him take all the credit when it was a team effort and praise should also go to everyone who has participated in this venture. I will not name names as I may forget someone you all know who you are.

The idea behind all this is to create a self defence system that will work for either men or women adults or children. In this they have become very successful and now boast many instructors In the U.K and abroad.

Where do I get off writing about the Psychology of Collecting? I have no degree in any of the behavioral sciences. (Took a Psychological Foundations of Education to get my teaching credential some years ago. Got an ‘A’, but frankly, I thought it was all a bit silly.) The answer is simple. I’ve made a hobby of observing people’s hobbies. Talking to them -or more accurately- listening to them talk about a subject they love. (And I have to say that there are worse ways to learning about something. An interesting discourse and a dull discourse are often separated by little more then the discourser and his or her interest in that subject.)

Collecting might be thought of as a subset of a larger human behavior named -if only for the sake of convenience – hobbies. But I’m not sure this is true. I theorize that collectors and hobbyists are entirely different things. Take model train people as evidence. I used to take my casework to train shows when they came to northern California. Nice people the model train ‘hobbyists’, but they come in two distinct flavors. There are those who build tracks and little cities and mountains etc. and then play with their trains.   Then there are collectors who are somehow compelled to own a sample of every locomotive the Lionel made in a given year. Or all the locomotives Lionel ever made. Or all the locomotives, cars, tankers, cabooses, etc of a given scale / year / manufacturer. Often they don’t even open the package -reduces the value, I’m told. Both the builders and the collectors go to the same show and -I suppose- talk to each other -but they are completely distinct species.

PATHOLOGICAL COLLECTORS:

There are some poor souls who are pathological in their collecting. Not my word, ‘pathological’. The research folks use this word to describe collecting to the point that it interferes with daily life. Their houses are filled -and I mean literally every-square-foot- floor-to-ceiling-filled- until-it-crashes-through-the-floor-below FILLED with stuff. These people usually have no interest in the stuff in their collection, but pitch a fit if someone tires to take any of it away. There is some research indicating how this might be explained.   Steven W. Anderson, a neurologist, and his colleagues at the University of Iowa studied 63 people with brain damage from stroke, surgery or encephalitis who had no previous problems with hoarding before their illness, but afterward, began filling their houses with such things as old newspapers, broken appliances or boxes of junk. The good Doctor says:

These compulsive collectors had all suffered damage to the prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in decision making, information processing and behavioral organization. The people whose collecting behavior remained normal also had brain damage, but it was instead distributed throughout the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

Anderson posits that the urge to collect derives from the need to store supplies such as food–a drive so basic it originates in the subcortical and limbic portions of the brain. Humans need the prefrontal cortex, he says, to determine what “supplies” are worth hoarding.

I need to make one last point before moving on to the merely nutty-non-pathological-collectors. All the reading I’ve done suggests that collecting for -what-ever reason and to what-ever degree- is little understood and there is really not all much clear research out there. This takes me back to my starting point -I get to pretend to be an expert on the psychology of collecting because t’aint no one else out there who is any better qualified then I am.

NUT-CASE (non-clinical) COLLECTORS:

Somewhat less ‘traumatic’ / ‘dramatic’? – and it’s pretty clear I’m on thin-ice psycho-babble here – are the merely obsessive compulsive disorder collectors. No detectable brain damage – just good old OCD – or we might call it OCCD, (Obsessive Compulsive Collecting Disorder). But I wonder how many people who are truly committed to a given subject, (coin collecting, the Denver Broncos, UFO’s, conspiracy theories, you name it) have family and friends who look at them, shake their heads and mutter something about OCD under their breaths. But before we get on to collectors -Collectors with a capital C, coins, stamps, model railroad car Collectors, etc., we might consider the collector in all of us. There is a delightful story written by Judith Katz-Schwartz – Remembering Grandma. Her grandma was a refugee -as a very young girl- from Tsarist Russia who collected…. and I quote…

…the tops of Bic pens neatly wound with rubber bands; hundreds of tiny garment snaps threaded onto safety pins; at least one hundred glass jars, all sparkling clean; eighty-seven neatly rolled and clamped Ace bandages.

I thought this was a little funny, till the chap with whom I share a wood shop reminded me about the two big garbage bags I have filled with carefully cleaned BBQ sauce bottles. I love BBQ sauce and eat it on almost everything.   About a bottle a week. No idea what will ever come of them, but I KNOW the day will come when I’m dang glad I have all these empty BBQ sauce bottles.

Judith sums it up beautifully and with kind & rare insight, I think. In the above mentioned article, she closes with….

Some people collect for investment. Some collect for pleasure. Some folks do it to learn about history. And some people “save things” because it helps them to fill a gaping hole, calm fears, erase insecurity. For them, collecting provides order in their lives and a bulwark against the chaos and terror of an uncertain world. It serves as a protectant against the destruction of everything they’ve ever loved. Grandma’s things made her feel safe. Though the world outside was a dangerous and continually changing place, she could still sit safely in her apartment at night, “putting together my things”.

Then there was an episode from the TV sit-com Third Rock from the Sun. You might remember that Dick -(John Lithgow) became obsessed with Fuzzy Buddies. I take “Fuzzy Buddies” to be the producer’s way to avoid being sued by the folks that make “Beanie Babies.”   If one were to be perfectly honest about things, I suspect most – if not all of us – saw a little of ourselves in the character.  

There is another quite unique kind of nut-case collecting -that practiced by dictators as they accumulate bric-a-brac. Possible motives for collecting abound: compulsion, competition, exhibitionism, desire for immortality and the need for experts’ approval. According to Peter York, a British journalist who studied dictators’ decor for his book Dictator Style, recognizes all of the above in his subjects. It’s basically a dictator’s job, he says, to take everything over-the-top. For example…

Saddam Hussein  

Sci-fi fantasy paintings featuring menacing dragons and barely-clad blondes.

Adolf Hitler    

Bavarian 18th century furniture. Munich antique dealers were ordered to keep an eye out for him.

Kim Jong II

20,000 videos (Daffy Duck cartoons, Star Wars, Liz Taylor and Sean Connery flicks)

Idi Amin

Several racing cars and loads of old film reels of I Love Lucy reruns and Tom and Jerry cartoons

Joseph Stalin   

Westerns with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and John Wayne. Stalin also inherited Joseph Goebbels’s films.

He also points out that “Some of these people,” he says, “were really very short.”

VICTIM COLLECTORS:

Don’t know what else to call this set. There are a few companies that sell stuff so well -and with such frightening insight to their customers, and do so with such deliberate marketing plans carefully designed to exploit the poor collector’s peccadilloes, that these collectors are victims of something -themselves – or the mean old marketing companies, don’t know which.

Case in point is Hallmark Cards and their Christmas Keepsake Ornaments. Note particularly the word “keepsake” and compare it to the idea of “nostalgia”. (Any research into collecting by the PhD crowd seems to hang on the word “nostalgia.”) It is reasonable to collect things that speak from the past. This is no more nor less then any historic museum does. It is also reasonable to collect things that trigger -let us hope- pleasant memories of our own past. (People of my age remember Chutes and Ladders and Candy-Land games. This it the sort of thing Daniel Arnett writes about in her article Why We Collect, published elsewhere on this site.) But these things are authentic. 

Hallmark has made millions -and I have nothing against making money- selling fake nostalgia -and let us not mince words here- to women. If you were to read the articles I have, it also seems clear that these women are not women with careers, educations, children to raise, or -and we are still not mincing words here- much else to do.

And what lengths will Hallmark goes to get these poor women to buy the next ornament -or series of 5 or 10 ornaments? Seminars, conventions, news letters, autograph opportunities (the artists), and advance viewings. (Advance viewings for plastic ornaments stamped out in by the millions??? YEP!)

Not just Hallmark either. Consider Franklin Mint, Hummel Figurines, little ceramics of English cottages, memorial plates with Elvis painted thereon. Not for nothing are these things ‘nostalgic’. When ever a kid’s movie comes out either McDonald’s or Burger King has little plastic toys / figurines / antenna balls of each character. Then kids of a certain age must be fed Happy Meals until they have the entire collection. (For kids “nostalgia” stretches all the way back to the movie they saw a whole week ago.)

ACCIDENTAL COLLECTORS:

My sister tells me of a fourth and final category of collector.  This sort might well be viewed as a victim as well, but I chose to call them accidental. She writes… 

Someone mentions once that they like X and then for years later all their friends give them is X and then they really start to hate X. Loren and Bonnie [my nieces] once had a teacher that everyone in the whole school knew loved giraffes and collected them. I was talking to her one day and she said it all started years ago when she was explaining a project the kids had to do to tell about themselves. She used herself as an example and said out of the blue that she liked giraffes. Now this poor women has received every possible giraffe thing ever made. She told me that she doesn’t even like the damn animals.

The psychology of these poor souls is easy to understand. They are the ‘co-dependent,’ (‘accidental enablers’?) nexus of a mild mass-OCD. They know it to be well meant but they are too kind to say anything to get themselves out if it. What are you gonna do?

Judith has a wealth or excellent advice to offer collectors. And some very nice stuff of her own for sale. Check out her site Twin Brooks and her book Secrets of a Collecting Diva. If I had her book before I wrote some of my articles it would have saved me a lot of time researching and making-up stuff. 

Capture the wonder and joy of your Little Einstein’s first birthday with a Baby Einstein birthday party. Since Baby Einstein helps teach children about animals and colors, try to incorporate these things in order to come up with some ingenious 1st birthday party ideas.

INVITATION

Cut an 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of cardstock into 4 pieces. Either download animals or use die-cut ducks, frogs, cats, dogs, turtles, etc. and glue to one side of the cardstock. Type or hand-write your party details in calligraphy on a decorative piece of scrapbook paper. Cut the scrapbook paper with decorative scissors to a finished size of 3″ x 4 1/2″. Glue to the back of the cardstock. Finish it off by decorating the corners with Baby Einstein stickers. Here’s some suggested wording for your invite:

Hooray for you,

Hooray for me.

Come have fun,

I’m turning one!

PARTY GAMES & ACTIVITIES

To magnify your theme, create exploration tables for your little ones to enjoy exploring. Be sure to have parents or helpers at each table to assist with the various activities.

Instrument Table – Try to have a diverse assortment of musical instruments available. Size appropriate and easy to use instruments like cymbals, tambourines, bells, chimes, shakers, cowbells, maracas, rhythm sticks, ukulele, and triangle are all great choices.

Building Table – Have available blocks, stack n’ sort cubes, geometric stackers, alphabet nesting stacking blocks, and shape sorting cubes for building fun.

Puzzle Table – Chunky puzzles are a perfect addition to this theme party. Look for puzzles that are farm animals, construction, dinosaurs, fish, jungle animals, house pets, shapes, cars, etc.

Toy Table – Lots of toys provide educational fun and some of the best option are a Baby Einstein Octoplush, Press & Play Pals Dragon, Tummy Tickers Bird, Tummy Ticklers Dog, Tummy Ticklers Dragon, Discovery Sounds Home, and Fisher Price Lil People Musical Zoo Train.

BIRTHDAY CAKE IDEAS

Use Wilton’s mini sports ball cake pan, which makes 6 half balls, to create a Baby Einstein caterpillar cake. Frost each ball red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple. Place caterpillar domes close together and crooked (like it is crawling) on cake cardboard. Add chocolate chips for eyes and shoestring licorice for antenna. If you need more cake for the guests, just double the recipe and make your caterpillar longer.

PARTY FAVORS

Decorate clear cellophane bags or small colorful paper bags with Baby Einstein stickers. Fill them with Baby Einstein finger puppets, stickers, bubbles, small stuffed animal, Play-doh, rubber ducky, or bath crayons.

When ferrets get sick, they might not want to go to all the work of eating their kibble or ripping meat apart. Older ferrets might have bad teeth and kibble might hurt too much to eat. So, feed them duck soup.

What is duck soup?

Firstly, duck soup doesn’t usually have duck in it. As the story goes, a ferret named Lucky Ducky was sick and his humans fed him “soup” while he got better. Since then, any supplemental mushy food is called duck soup.

When should you feed your ferret duck soup?

It’s okay to give most kinds of duck soup to your ferret as a treat. It’s even a good idea to give him some when he is healthy, so he gets used to it and doesn’t mind it when he actually needs it.

Additionally, you should feed this concoction to your fuzzy when he’s sick and has stopped eating or if he’s old and won’t eat enough.

Where do you get duck soup?

You can buy something at the pet store called duck soup. I’ve never tried. it. Most people I know make their own soup for their fuzzies. Most people seem to have their own recipes. Here are some of them.

Chicken baby food

Gerber chicken baby food is easy to digest and a decent food for a fuzzy. Most ferrets will lick it on up without too much coaxing. Chicken baby food has the advantage that it comes in little jars, so not a whole lot will go bad at once. Once you open the jar, however, you need to refrigerate it.

The kibble variety

Put your ferret’s kibble in a coffee grinder (or blender) and pulverize it. Put your kibble powder in a tightly sealed container. When its time to fed your weasel, put a little bit of kibble in a bowl and add enough water to hydrate it. You can even microwave it for a few seconds if you want. The advantages to this kind of duck soup are that you’re not changing food on your ferret, and you can make as small a quantity as you need without waste. I use this form of duck soup when I travel with a sick ferret because it’s nice and portable.

The sweet kind

If you’re ferret is having trouble with the desire to eat, this might be the way to go. You take 1 jar of chicken baby food and 1 container of Ensure. Put it in a tightly sealed container and shake the mixture. This mixture is sweet and almost any ferret will love to eat it. The disadvantages to this soup are that the mixture does have a fair amount of sugar in it from the Ensure, and the mixture won’t last more than a couple of days.

A more traditional soup

Take a chicken. Stick it in a giant pot with water. Boil for a long time. Eventually the skin and meat will fall off the bones. Turn off the heat. Pick the bones out of the mixture. Get a stick blender and blend the mixture. (You can put this stuff in a blender, but every time I’ve tried that, I’ve ended up with boiling soup on my face. It hurts. Stick blenders are good.) Once the mixture is mixed, pour it into ice-cube trays and freeze. When you need to feed your fuzzy, take out one cube and microwave it. Mix it and feed your ferret.

Other things you might consider adding to the soup before you freeze it are olive oil or a little bit of ground kibble.

As I said before, there are tons of recipes available for duck soup. If one doesn’t work, try another.

Because of the rapid pace of change in today’s work environment, more needs to be done to train and assist leaders of organizations gain the practical skills that will assist them lead change efforts, which skills may be different than managerial skills most leaders have been exposed to in other types of leadership functions. It would be beneficial to companies to address the basic skills needed by managers at all levels of the organization to best implement organizational change. To be effective, this training needs to deal with the issues that lead organizations to fail in many change efforts. This training must help leaders understand and recognize the attitudes, reasons for resistance, and challenges of implementation, of the overall change project.

The amount of change placed on managers by their organizations has grown at an amazing rate over the last several years. Nor is the rate of change likely to decrease anytime in the foreseeable future. As reported by Hersey et al, in a survey conducted by the Gallop Organization of 400 executives from Fortune 1000 companies, 79 percent of executives described “the pace of change at their companies as ‘rapid’ or ‘extremely rapid’ and 61 percent believed the pace will pick up in the future”. As organizations are being forced to deal with the pressures of the global marketplace, the pace of change is likely to increase, as executives look to outsource, down-size, right-size, merge, re-align or look for any way to remain competitive and increase earnings. As John Kotter has stated, through all these efforts “the basic goal has been the same: to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a new, more challenging environment” (Kotter, 2000, p. 59).

However, while top executives look at change efforts as opportunities to strengthen their companies and increase their influence, for employees “change is neither sought after nor welcomed” but rather seen as “disruptive” and “intrusive” (Strebel, 1996, p. 88). Employee resistance is likely compounded by the fact that the great majority of corporate change efforts are not successful. As explained by Michael Beer, “while senior managers understand the necessity of change to cope with new competitive realities, they often misunderstand what it takes to bring it about” (Beer et al, 2000, p. 158), leading to many efforts not reaching the level of success has hoped and planned for. As reported by Jeanie Daniel Duck, after passing through repeated failed episodes of change “by now, the troops have been through so many of these programs that they’re skeptical” (Duck, 1993, p. 111). She describes the situation further by saying that, “Companies today are full of change survivors, cynical people who’ve learned how to live through change programs without really changing at all” (Duck, 1993, p. 112).

While leaders of the corporation may understand the reason for change, and put great effort in planning and implementing the change, they often fail because of the lack of support of the vast majority of the employees. This contributes to a disappointingly large number of change efforts which end in failure. As John Kotter states “in too many situations the improvements have been disappointing and the carnage has been appalling, with wasted resources and burned-out, scared, or frustrated employees” (Kotter, 1996, p. 4).

A more complete understanding of the principles of change leadership and team effectiveness which could be taught to managers in order to help them move their organizations successfully through change efforts could greatly improve the organizations’ overall success rate at implementing changes, as well as improve the overall experience of the employees and managers forced to implement the changes.

Any tourist travelling to Singapore for the first time can easily get lost in its labyrinth of high-rise buildings and interconnected roads. In this article you will learn more about Singapore and how to travel around this beautiful country without getting lost.

Known for its shopping haven and delightful wide-ranging local cuisine, this garden city was handpicked by the British colonialists for its excellent geographic position since it is smack bang right in the middle of the Malay archipelago – yet sheltered from strong winds and waves by the Indonesian islands. Singapore broke away from the clutches of colonialism in 1957 and separated from its neighbouring peninsula Malaysia, soon after in 1965 to become an independent nation.

Steeped with historic political turmoil in the early days, Singapore has grown into a strong and stable country known for its tough laws and cleanliness. Being a small city-state covering 707.1 km2 (273.0 sq mi) of land, you can actually travel from one end of the city to the other in a matter of hours. This is a proof of good city planning and excellent public transport system.

While travelling to Singapore is easy with many airlines touching down in its world-class airport, travelling within the country can be an interesting experience for someone making their maiden trip. For one thing, you are spoilt for choices. For such a small country, whose existence in the world map is marked by a dot, Singapore has 7 taxi companies with some 24,000 cabs patrolling the island at any given time. The robust train network, the nostalgic trishaw rides, the leisurely boat trips and so many ways to tour this small dot of a country will ensure that you will reach your destination in any fashion you choose.

Here is the different transportation available for you when you travel to Singapore:

Duck tours

How would you like to travel the roads and rivers of Singapore? Hop on the amphibious duck tour that combines a bus and a boat. You will tour the busy streets and glide onto the water for a river cruise.

River cruise

Take a leisurely, relaxing boat ride down the Singapore River. Savour the sights of several historic monuments including the old Post Office, the Parliament House, Victoria Theatre, symbolic statues of the Merlion and Raffles, the Esplanade and the row of colourful shop houses lining the riverbanks.

Trishaws

Trishaws were a common sight in the early days of Singapore with Chinese coolies hauling large, wooden trishaws across the bustling city. As Singapore grew busier and more hectic, Singaporeans chose other faster and more efficient forms of transportation leaving trishaw rides a faint memory of the past. Relive this nostalgic ride by hiring trishaw riders to cycle you down the busy city streets of Singapore. If you do not have a tour guide to hire one for you, be prepared to haggle over the fare.

Buses

Close your eyes and flag a bus; chances are the bus will take you to a bus interchange attached to a train station with a shopping mall nearby. This small island is so well connected that it is impossible for you to get lost when you travel around Singapore.

Mass Rapid Transport (MRT)

Singaporeans use the MRT trains to travel anywhere in the island. In fact, you can catch a train from the Changi Airport to the city or residential areas.

Rental cars

If you are thinking of cruising in a rented car, you need to have an International Driving License and a valid passport. Renting a car is a good way to tour at your own pace especially if you enjoy club-hopping till the wee hours of the morning.

Taxis

Alternatively, hailing or dialling for a cab is one of the best options. The drivers are usually honest and efficient in their service. If you do come across a taxi driver who refuses to use the meter and charges you an exorbitant price, just dial the police of Singapore Tourism Board to lodge a report since touting is illegal in Singapore.

With so many options to tour around Singapore, you can travel to any part of the island in a short time. Discover the unique features and attractions of a small yet strong nation as well as its reliable and excellent public transport system.

Pros

Great Family Dogs: Your Lab will love your entire family and they are great companions for responsible children. Many breeds can turn out to be a one-person dog which makes it miserable for the rest of the family.

Good Natured and They Love People: They are very easygoing, friendly and have a good temperament. This breed is also accepting to strangers. The only down side to this is that he won’t bark if you have an intruder. Instead of pinning him in a corner, your Lab might show him where the cookie jar is.

Labs are “Dog” Friendly: If you want your Lab for a hunting dog, it is critical that they like other dogs since you can be sure there will be other dogs out hunting with you. Labs are not aggressive.

They House Train Easily: Obviously dogs don’t train themselves, but Labs are exceptionally bright and they always want to please their owner which makes training quick and easy.

Athletic: If you are a jogger or hiker, this dog is the perfect choice. They love this type of exercise or any kind of sport you do. They always want to be exercising, so doing it with you will make them happy.

All-Around Hunting Dog: This dog will retrieve on land or water. If you are a hunter and you’re looking for that perfect dog to retrieve your ducks, pheasants, geese, etc., choose a Lab. This breed loves any kind of water activity, which is also great for the kids when you go to the lake for fun.

Cons

Labs Demand Attention: Labs were bred to work whether it’s fetching a toy, getting you your newspaper or chasing birds in the wild. They need your attention! An intelligent dog will become destructive if you don’t stimulate him mentally. They need to see new places, learn new skills, see new things and smell fresh scents.

Destructiveness: I suggest you find the time to give your new Lab attention as described above because if these needs are not met, he will be very destructive. He’ll chew on everything, shred your furniture, pillows and bedding, dig huge holes in your back yard, jump the fence and bark as much as possible. This is how they express themselves. You need to have the time to give him attention.

Costly Health Problems: Many older Labs can get chronic ailments that are very expensive to treat. If he gets arthritis, you can spend up to $4-$5 per day. If he gets allergies, their food can cost as much as $80-$100 per month. They have also been known to have hip problems due to their excessive exercising and high energy, which are very costly when surgery is needed.

They Shed A Lot of Hair: The Lab’s coat if very thick because it protects them from the elements while hunting and diving into cold lakes. This means that his coat sheds constantly. You will be vacuuming daily.

Odor: Dogs produce oil in their coats, but Labs were developed for water activities and their heavy coats produce more oil. This is a distinctive smell especially when he has been out exercising or has been in water. If you find it offensive, you will need to bath your dog often. (please be careful not to dry out his skin)

Your Lab Needs A Job: This may sound silly to you, but these dogs were bred to perform specific working functions. They need that stimulation of mental and physical activity. You will need to commit a lot of time and energy to this breed so make sure your entire family understands this before you go out and buy a Lab.

The Palace on wheels is one of the top ten luxury train journeys in the world. It provides you a cozy trip to the splendid forts and palaces of Rajasthan within eight days.

Palace on Wheels starts with the aim of offering the tourists an unforgettable tour with a unique enthusiasm. If you wish to travel with cozier or enthusiasm, explore the best tour package and make your journey memorable with palace on wheels. Palace on Wheels is luxury train that is completely in sync with the attraction and majestic of the places that you will be visiting on board. In this article, we provide more information on Palace on Wheels, India.

Many facilities are provided in the palace on wheels; it has been one of the ten most excellent luxurious train journeys. It provides a series of restaurants, a bar, luxury cabin, a library, lounges, personal attendance, individually designed saloons with en-suite bathroom, wall to wall carpeting, two dining cars and a lot more on board. While traveling in the palace on wheels, you will feel that you are the one who is traveling of heave being on the earth for eight days.

Palace on Wheels takes you on a memorable or wonderful eight-day journey of the royal state of Rajasthan, it is started from Delhi. During the journey it is covered many cities like ‘Pink City’ of Jaipur; Jaisalmer; Ranthambore ‘Sun City’ of Jodhpur; and Udaipur or ‘Venice of the East, red city of Fatehpur Sikri and Agra or “City of the Taj’. Be a part of this extravagance safari and we trust you that you will feel like regal yourself.

Details palace on wheels package program

Day 1 – Delhi

Delhi is a beautiful city. The city Delhi has always been the interior of politics and therefore has several edifices of great historical significance. The famous historical buildings are Qutub Minar, Red Fort, India Gate, Jama Masjid, Lotus Temple, Humayun Tomb and Rashtrapati Bhawan etc in Delhi.

Day 2 – Jaipur

Jaipur is also known as ‘Pink City’ which is the capital of Rajasthan of India. The city of jaipur provides a micable blend of traditional modern ways and lifestyle.

Day 3 – Jaisalmer

Jaisalmer is a beautiful city. A visit to the Patwon Ki Haveli is a must on any traveler’s itinerary.

Day 4 – Jodhpur

Jodhpur is a lovely city which found by Rao Jodhaji in the mid-15th century; provide fascinating tourist attractions like Phool Mahal (Flower Palace) Moti Mahal (Pearl Palace), and Sukh Mahal (Pleasure Palace).

Day 5 – Ranthambore

Sawai Madhopur is the town at the entrance of Ranthabore National Park, which is famous for lush environs, meandering rivers clear lakes and many wild species.

Day 6 – Udaipur

Udaipur is found in the mid of century by king Udai Singh. Udaipur is known by “city of lakes”. Lake Palace is the attraction of the city.

Day 7 – Bharatpur

Today, Bharatpur is known as the country finest bird sanctuary. Best time to visit sanctuary is between October and February when a lot of migratory birds can be seen. You can enjoy the saras cranes, storks, darters, herons, geese, ducks, eagles, hawks, shanks, stints, wagtails, wheatears, flycatchers, buntings, owls and pipits, larks, spoonbills, kingfishers, and several other things also.

Day 8 – Agra

Agra is famous as being home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World “the Taj Mahal”. You can see many things in Agra like Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikari, Red Fort, Sikandra, the journey ends in Delhi.

Cognitive development develops at a fast pace during the early years of a child. When they are 2 years old, the brain has grown to 75 percent of its adult weight and by 5 years old, 90 percent. That is why during these early years, they need to be given opportunities to be stimulated and challenged through playing intellectual games. Young children are naturally self-motivated, curious and are eager to explore almost everything and to help them, we must provide them concrete materials to manipulate, toys for example, problems to solve, and the opportunity to experience with the environment and encouraging them to ask questions.

Children express themselves better when they are playing games:

1. Fun games for kids to expand their vocabulary.

Language develops fast during the early years and language is caught rather than taught. Use puppets, toy phones or walkie-talkies to encourage the children to tell stories or what they have done for the day. You can draw eyes, nose and mouth on each finger and have a story-telling with your child. An example, I am Monday and my favorite hobby is painting because I am called the Thumb and I love to dip myself into paint to form patterns on the paper. What is your favorite hobby? The child learns a collection of words which helps them to communicate and this activity is fun and creative.

2. Fun games for kids to develop their musical intelligence.

Children have their first experience with music when parents sing lullabies and dance with them when they were still infants. Music is important during the early years as it helps the children to bond socially, emotionally and cognitively with people. Encouraging the children to move along with the music or playing with musical instruments helps them to control their fine motor skills and develops their eye-hand coordination. You can play this game which is funny for kids. Play any fast moving song and ask the children to hop like a frog and kicking their legs while hopping, move like a train, hooting as they go along or wiggle like a worm.

3. Fun games for kids to develop their literacy.

Story songs have rhythm and are fun and enrich a child’s vocabulary through their short, simple texts. Nursery rhymes are an example of story songs and they stay with us as they are passed from one generation to another. Nursery rhymes have a musical quality incorporating language rhythm, patterns and rhymes in every verse which fascinates children to develop their language.

You can also finger play while singing a story song and there are many story songs which you can use like “Five Lttle Ducks”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider’, “I’m a Little Teapot” and many others. While singing “Five Little Ducks” show five fingers and so on.

Games should be kept short and stop when the children show signs of restlessness or lack of interest. If you want more of such activities to stimulate your children during these vital early years, you can visit www.gamesforfunkids.com for more of such creative activities.

As a four-decade Certified Travel Agent, international airline employee, researcher, writer, teacher, and photographer, travel, whether for pleasure or business purposes, has always been a significant and an integral part of my life. Some 400 trips to every portion of the globe, by means of road, rail, sea, and air, entailed destinations both mundane and exotic. This article focuses on my worldwide rail journeys.

My Rail Program, spanning the 24-year period from 1995 to 2009, entailed 45 coal mine, excursion steam, narrow-gauge, narrow-gauge steam, cog, short-range, and long-range by 35 rail lines, encompassing 12 countries, eight Canadian provinces, 22 US states, and more than 10,000 miles.

Seven long-range journeys in Canada, the US, and Mexico factored into my lifetime rail program. Three of these took place in Canada.

The first, on VIA Rail Canada’s The Ocean between Montreal and Halifax, Nova Scotia, covered 1,346 kilometers. Paralleling the S.t Lawrence River and the Gaspe Peninsula, it crossed the line between Quebec and New Brunswick. Traversing its Miramichi Basin, the province’s geographical center, it plied the Moncton-intersecting tracks, crossing the Nova Scotia border. Circumventing Bedford Basin, it closed the gap to Halifax, completing its two-day journey.

The second, this time on VIA Rail Canada’s Hudson Bay, was a three-day, 1,697-kilometer journey from Winnipeg to Churchill, considered the polar bear capital of the world. An evening departure saw it make a gradual, northwesterly climb, skirting Lake Manitoba and Dauphin Lake, before arcing onto a westerly course and threading its way between Riding Mountain National Park and Duck Mountain Provincial Park and reaching Glenella minutes before midnight.

Penetrating the vast, subarctic tundra expanses above the tree line for most of the second day, it arrived in Churchill that evening.

A four-day, 4,459-kiilometer eastbound, trans-Canada crossing from Vancouver to Toronto, this time on The Canadian, entailed a traverse of the Rocky Mountains through British Columbia and Alberta, and then a prairie-passing through Saskatchewan’s western low lands. Its Activities Car provided a lounge, books, and games, and its upper dome afforded magnificent views, along with croissants in the morning and hot hors d’oeuvres and wine in the evening.

Accommodation, as with the other long-range rail journeys, was in a private compartment, and all meals, detailed on leather-covered menus, were provided in the dining car. One such dinner included chicken and shataki mushroom cream soup with tarragon; mixed greens with vinaigrette dressing and hot dinner rolls and butter; apple- and cranberry-stuffed chicken breast accompanied by champagne risotto, carrot strips, and asparagus; raspberry-sauce-drizzled chocolate cake; coffee; and chocolate mints.

Traveling past the grain field prairies of the western lowlands, The Canadian chugged through undeveloped forest and the lakes of Whiteshell Provincial Park as the last few kilometers of Manitoba, the province located midway between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, ticked away. By 1630, having crossed the Manitoba-Ontario border between Winnitoba and Rice Lake, the train penetrated the western edge of the billion-year-old Pre-Cambrian Shield, prevalent with glacier-carved lakes.

The lighted Toronto skyscrapers, looming ahead like glittering, jewel-bedecked monoliths, suddenly appeared in the distance, in inverse order to those which had receded behind at the beginning of the journey, and grew in size with each traversed kilometer. Now inching toward its eastern terminus at Toronto’s Union Station on track 7 beneath clear, star-twinkling skies and 65-degree temperatures directly in front of the needle-thin CN Tower, The Canadian assumed barely-registerable speed and motion. The tower itself served as both physical and symbolic confirmation of the trip’s completion.

Three long-range rail journeys also took place in the US.

The first, at 361 miles, threaded is way from New York’s Penn Station to Montreal as the Adirondack, passing through the Hudson Valley, the Adirondack Mountains, and Lake Champlain, before briefly stopping at the Canadian Customs checkpoint of Cantic, Quebec, and then proceeding through flat farmland and over the St. Lawrence River to its destination.

A US transcontinental counterpart to the Canadian one, albeit in the reverse or westerly, direction, and only covering two-thirds of the way, occurred on Amtrak’s California Zephyr from Chicago to Emeryville (serving San Francisco), California. Gliding over the Great Plains of Nebraska on its three-day, 2,438-mile journey, it crossed the Colorado state line and approached the majestic Rocky Mountains, paralleling the snaking Colorado River, and threading its way through chiseled canyons, rust-red rock, and initially small, pine tree-dotted hills. The Continental Divide-crossing Moffat Runnel, at 6.2 miles in length, constituted the route’s longest, and pinnacled at a 9,240-foot elevation.

Accommodation was in the Bilevel Superliner’s first-class compartment, meals were in the dining car, and two interpretive programs about the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains were given, while the lower level of its sightseeing lounge and café offered fare for tourist class passenger purchase.

Continuing past the Great Salk Lake in Utah, it entered California, the seventh and last state on its route. Proceeding through Truckee, it entered Donner Pass and arched its way through its horseshoe curve to the two-mile-long Tunnel 41. Alternatively known as the “Big Hole,” it bored its way through the Sierra Nevada Mountains at a 7,040-foot elevation. Emerging from the mountains and no longer topographically speed-restricted it traveled through the flat tan, brown, and green geometry of the Sacramento Valley until the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and city-signature, pyramid-shaped Transamerica Tower affirmed its approach to and imminent arrival in Emeryville.

The third long-range US rail journey covered 1,389 miles during its West Coast climb from Los Angeles to Seattle in the Coast Starlite, crossing the rolling green Santa Cruz Mountains and threading its way through Pajero Gap, before entering the Santa Clara Valley.

A peak through the curtains at 0650 revealed an otherworldly vista sharply contrastive to that of the previous day, leaving one to wonder if a gap in speed and time had somehow not been accounted for. The bright blue of the Pacific had been replaced by volcanic mountain peaks and blankets of snow. A thin line of dull orange, glowing on the eastern horizon, flowed up over the dark, gray cloud obstruction like molten lava, oozing through until it had successfully eaten through its cover and created a multitude of cold, orange fissures which progressively burned through the otherwise thick, metallic gray insulation. Following the winding tracks through northern California, the silver, bilevel Superliner cars had thread their way through tall, thick pine abreast of 14,162-foot, snow-draped Mount Shasta, the tallest peak in the Cascade Mountain range. Burning with greater fury, dawn’s volcanic eruption lit the sky between two volcanic peaks a fiery orange, spreading its flames across the cloud fabric until it had engulfed it with burning victory. As the light now penetrated the windows of the train, the dual-floored city of the Coast Starlight awoke.

Dinner that evening included a mixed salad with bleu cheese dressing; Pacific salmon with white wine sauce, rice pilaf, and green beans; cheese cake with strawberry sauce and whipped cream; and coffee.

The Coast Starlite proceeded over the Oregon-Washington state line through Tacoma to it Seattle destination.

The seventh long-range rail journey, from Chihuahua to Los Mochis in the Chihuahua Al Pacifico Railroad, bored its way through Mexico’s Copper Canyon, its pre-dawn departure inviting breakfast in the dining car. This consisted of a ham and cheese omelet, fried potatoes with peppers and onions, refried beans with cotija cheese, and tortillas and salsa.

Plunging through Tunnel 4, at 4,134.8 feet, the line’s longest and marking the third Continental Divide crossing, it subsequently climbed 8,071-foot Los Ojitos, passing mountain and canyon topography.

An overnight stay in a lodge in Posada Barrancas preceded a re-departure the following afternoon. The train, descending into the Santa Barbara Canyon, proceeded through the town of El Fuente, lurching beneath dark, velvet, star-studded skies as it covered the remaining distance to Los Mochis. Snagging its brakes at 2205 local time after a 16-hour, 20-minute journey (excluding the overnight stop). It connected the plains with the Pacific by means of the Copper canyon, in what could only be labeled a feat of railroad engineering.

Although all of these long-range journeys employed the “journey is the destination” theme and were taken to facilitated research and book,.log, and article writing, several others, while relative short in duration, were taken for pure-travel purposes, such as those on the Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR) from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, on the Swiss Federal Railways from Geneva to Lausanne, on the Belgian Railways from Brussels to Bruges and Ghent, on the Moroccan National Railways between Casablanca and Marrakech, on the Bergan Railway from Voss to Myrdal in Norway, and on the Tacna-Arica Railroad from Chile to Peru across the Atacama Desert.

Several short-duration excursion trains were also sampled, such as the Black Hills Central Railroad in South Dakota, the Branson Scenic Railway in Missouri, the Catskill Mountain Railroad in New York, the Mount Hood Railroad in Oregon, the Great Smokey Mountains Railroad to the Nantahala Gorge in North Carolina, the New Tygart Flyer in West Virginia, the Naugatuck Railroad in Connecticut, the West Chester Railroad in Pennsylvania, and the Conway Scenic Railroad in New Hampshire.

Steam trains also frequently factored into these track-plying journeys. Notable were the Yosemite Sugar Pine Railroad in California, the Strasburg Railroad in Pennsylvania, the Cass Scenic Railroad in West Virginia, the Western Maryland Railroad in Maryland, the Wilmington and Western Railroad in Delaware, and the Belvedere and Delaware River Railroad in New Jersey.

There were notable differences, however. The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine train in West Virginia, for example, bored through the low, dark mine itself, whose oxygen levels were once measured by the strength of the candle flames harnessing them. The Cog Railway, a National Historic Engineering Landmark, clutched, like axel-installed claws, the tracks up New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, sometimes climbing at more than 37-degree angles.

Crossing the Appalachian Trail, it terminated at the almost winter-like temperatures and rarefied air of the 6,288-foot White Mountain summit, where the four states of New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and New York could be seen, along with the province of Quebec in Canada.

Narrow gauge rail journeys were taken in Alaska with the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad and in Snowdonia National Park in Wales with the Ffestiniog Railroad, while steam locomotives combined with narrow-gauge tracks, accounted for journeys on the East Broad Top Railroad from Orbisonia in Pennsylvania and the Ferrocarril Austral Fueguino through Tierra del Fuego National Park in Argentina’s Patagonian region.

Finally, one of the most scenic and dramatic journeys occurred on the Flam Railway, was Norway’s major tourist attraction.

Tracing its origins to 1895, when its rail roots were first planted in verbal form, it initially attracted opposition, particularly because its Flam station, located at the end of a fjord, would have been impassable in icing winter conditions. But support came from Ingolf Elster Christiansen, county governor in Sogn og Fjordane and later a member of parliament and a cabinet minister. The shortest and cheapest rail line, he advocated, would be able to transport products and goods from the Sogn region to eastern Norway, thus removing them from the Bergen market. However, the advent of the automobile prompted many to consider a road the better alternative.

On March 1 of the previous year, the Norwegian parliament had already approved construction of the Bergen Railroad from Oslo, but there was no provision for a branch line extension from it down the Flamsdalen Valley to the Sognefjord. Its only artery was then a steep, narrow, winding pack horse path.

Ultimately approved, the rail alternative began in 1924 with the manual excavation of 18 of its eventual 20 tunnels, which always began with the drilling of a center hole and two or three on either of its sides, Its fragments were removed by horse-pulled dumping wagons.

Actual track laying occurred between the summer of 1936 and the spring of 1940, at which time the Norwegian State Railways issued a statement that read, “On `1 August 1940, the Myrdal-Flam line is opened for temporary traffic of express goods and freight.”

The following summer it was officially designated the “Flam Railway.”

Motive traction was initially steam-supplied, but was quickly converted to electricity, generated by the Kjosfossen waterfall in the very valley it plied.

Today, it is the steepest standard-gauge railroad in Northern Europe.

Releasing its brakes and inching away from 865-meter-high Myrdal Station, the train passed through a few snow sheds before plying the 55-percent grade track and offering breathtaking vistas of mountain plateaus and snow-draped Tarven peak.

Boring through the Loop Tunnel, which entailed an internal circumnavigation, it adhered to the track that was built into nothing more than the mountains’ ledges. A brief alight at the 238-meter-high Kjosfossen Station, one of eleven, offered views of the pounding waterfall, which poured down the craggy, gray and green rock banks, erupting into ethereal mist.

Continuing its journey at no more than a 30-kph speed, the Flam Railway passed through the Nali Tunnel, the longest of the line’s 20 at 1,341.5 meters, and, after executing hairpin turns, passed Rjoandefossen, one of Norway’s highest waterfalls with a 140-meter vertical drop.

Below, along the Flamsdalen Valley’s riverbanks, were the velvet-green fields and orchards of the area’s farms.

Reducing speed, the train pulled into its terminus, Flam, flanked by 1,000-meter mountains and water-accessed by the blue, mirror-reflecting Aurlandsfjord, itself a branch of the Sognefjord, ending its 20.2-kilometer journey at a barely registerable two-meter elevation.

The town had a population of only 400, but the railroad carried 400,000 passengers per year.